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“Her eye caught mine, and she ceased to dance.” ( page 133) 



=THE= 

SHOW GIRL 


BY 

MAX PEMBERTON 

Author of 

“The Garden of Swords,” 
“Sir Richard Escombe,” etc. 



THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY 

PHILADELPHIA 



Copyright 1909 * 

t * 

by Max Pemberton 


copyright 1908 

BY MAX PEMBERTON 


All Rights Reserved according to 
the Copyright Laws of the 
United States and Great Britain 


• • 
# • • 


U3RARY Of CONGRESS 
Two Cooies Reerived 


JUN 15 1B08 




To 

James <3ori>on JSennett 

Hommage Reconnaissant 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

1. Being a letter from Henry Gastonard, of 

the Maison du bon Tabac at Paris, to his 
friend Paddy O’Connell, of Glendalough, 
County Wicklow 3 

2. The response of Paddy O’Connell, of Glen- 

dalough, County Wicklow, to his friend, 
Henry Gastonard, of the Maison du bon 
Tabac at Paris * 28 

3. A letter from the same brief author ad- 

dressed to the Reverend Arthur War- 
rington, of Beldon, Suffolk 29 

4. Henry Gastonard continues the story in a 

letter to his friend Paddy O’Connell ... 30 

5. Henry Gastonard writes to Paddy O’Con- 

nell telling him the story of a dinner 
and a challenge 47 

6. Being a telegram from Paddy O’Connell 

to his friend, Henry Gastonard 55 

7. A letter from the Rev. Arthur Warring- 

ton, of Beldon, Suffolk, to Mrs. Arthur 
Warrington at Porchester Terrace, Bays- 
water 56 

8. In which Paddy O’Connell, of Glenda- 

lough, writes to his sister Clara a full 
account of the duel between Henry 
Gastonard and the Captain Bernard 
d’Alengon 57 


Contents 


PAGE 


vi 

CHAPTER 

9. Being a further instalment of the story 

from the pen of Paddy O’Connell 68 

10. Henry Gastonard writes to Paddy O’Con- 

nell a letter concerning his search for 
Mimi the Simpleton 81 

11. Henry Gastonard informs Paddy O’Con- 

nell of his probable return to London. . 95 

12. Henry Gastonard tells of a visit to his 

cousin, the Bev. Arthur Warrington, at 


Lowestoft 109 

13. The Beverend Arthur Warrington writes 

in all haste to his Solicitor, Mr. James 
Frogg, of Serjeant’s Inn, Strand 122 

14. Paddy O’Connell apologises for his silence 124 

15. “The Chimes” at Yarmouth, and what 

Henry Gastonard learned of them 128 


16. Henry Gastonard gives a further account 

of his meeting with Mimi the Simpleton 139 

17. Paddy O’Connell lays down the law. . . . 146 

18. In which we hear something of the Pag- 


eant at Lowestoft 149 

19. In which we translate a letter from Henry 

Gastonard, of the Maison du bon Tabac, 
at Hampstead, to Mimi the Simpleton, 
at Felixstowe 168 

20. In which Mimi replies to Monsieur Henry 172 

21. Being a telegram from Henry Gastonard 

to his friend Paddy O’Connell, of Glen- 
dalough 175 


Contents vii 

CHAPTER . PAGE 

22. Being a reply from Paddy O’Connell to 

Henry Gastonard’s telegram 176 

23. Paddy O’Connell shares the news with his 

sister Clara 177 

24. In which Henry Gastonard keeps his 

promise to Martha Warrington 192 

25. Containing certain instructions to M. 

Jules Farman, ex-agent of police at 4 
(bis), Rue de Quatre Septembre, Paris. 201 

26. Madame Mimi writes a letter to Paddy 

O’Connell 204 

27. Paddy O’Connell replies to Mimi’s letter 208 

28. The same author addresses Henry Gaston- 

ard at the Hotel Metropole, Brighton. . . 212 

29. Henry Gastonard makes an urgent appeal 

to Jules Farman, of the Rue de Quatre 
Septembre, Paris 216 

30. Jules Farman sends to Henry Gastonard 

some account of his stewardship 222 

31. Henry Gastonard sends Paddy O’Connell 

some account of his labours in Paris. . . 229 

32. In which Paddy O’Connell advised his 

friend Harry to pay a visit 236 

33. The Reverend Arthur Warrington thanks 

Paddy O’Connell for services rendered. 240 

34. Henry Gastonard tells Paddy O’Connell of 

his visit to Madame Lea 242 

35. We meet the Marquis de Saint Faur and 

another old friend 254 


viii Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

36. Paddy O’Connell writes a brief letter from 

Jack Straw’s Castle at Hampstead .... 269 

37. In which we hear of Henry Gastonard at 

the Pavilion Henry Quatre, in the town 
of St. Germain by Paris 275 

38. The Reverend Arthur Warrington rebukes 

his wife, Martha Warrington, upon a 
trivial account 301 


39. We hear of Paddy O’Connell in a letter 

to Martha Warrington at Cambridge. . . 304 

40. A brief note from Jules Farman, in Paris', 

to Henry Gastonard, at St. Germain. . . 308 

41. In which Henry Gastonard receives a sum- 

mons from the Marquis de Saint Faur. . 310 

42. Paddy O’Connell hears that he may leave 

London, and is invited to take the first 


train to Paris 312 

43. Martha Warrington, being returned to her 

home, receives there a letter from the 
Chateau of Bougival 329 

44. Mr. James Frogg, of Serjeant’s Inn, re- 

ceives an unexpected answer to an ex- 
pectant letter 336 


45. Mr. James Frogg, of Serjeant’s Inn, passes 

on the unpleasant news to the Reverend 
Arthur Warrington, of Beldon, Suffolk. 337 

46. The Reverend Arthur Warrington receives 

the news and makes some complaint of it 339 


Contents 


IX 


CHAPTER PAGE 

47. Paddy O’Connell informs lais sister Clara 

that he is detained in London upon busi- 
ness of some importance 343 

48. In which Henry Gastonard hears of Jules 

Parman again, and of the criminal 
known as Bedotte the valet 346 

49. Madame Lea d’Alengon has really noth- 

ing to say; but she says it charmingly 
as ever 351 

50. Mimi the Simpleton writes a brief note 

to Madame the Princess HelSne of Ilidze 
and we translate it 353 

51. Mimi and Harry write to Paddy and ad- 

vise him of their approaching visit to 
Ireland 356 


* 


THE SHOW GIRL 


CHAPTER L 

[Being a letter from Henry Gastonard of the Maison 
du bon Tabac at Paris to his friend Paddy O’Con- 
nell of Glendalough, County Wicklow.] 

Maison du bon Tabac, 

May 15th, 1905. 

Dear Paddy, — You will have seen it in the 
papers, if papers still cross the pass to those ancient 
halls which enshroud the immortal glories of the clan 
O’Connell — but, my dear Paddy, you will have little 
idea of its meaning or be as far from the truth of 
it as Paul Delmet from a parson’s cassock or the 
Chevalier Honore de Villefort from the castles in 
Spain which the entirely disinterested Baroness has 
lately Bequeathed to him. 

I can hear your comments, your wisdom, can 
imagine your displeasure. What — a man who 

should be riding his hack in the Row, putting a 
yacht into commission at Cowes — or at the worst 
buying a thousand guinea motor-car to carry his 
3 


4 


The Show Girl 


friends from their creditors — this man living in a 
hovel at Montmartre, spending his money upon 
chansonniers, grisettes, cocottes and all that paste- 
board riff-raff which has made the Quat-Z-Arts 
famous wherever the American language is not 
spoken. This is what you say, my dear Paddy — 
this is what my beloved cousin Arthur is saying 
when he tells himself that in twelve months’ time 
the curtain falls upon the play, and he, the patron, 
walks off with the proceeds. 

Be sure that I forget this unpleasant truth when- 
ever life will permit me to do so. The thought for 
to-morrow is not often the spectre at the feasts over 
which Marcelle presides, nor one which Mimi La 
Godiche — which is to say Mimi the Simpleton — long 
permits to remain in heads as empty as her own. 
I am to lose my fortune of seven thousand pounds 
a year if, at the mature age of twenty-five, I am not 
earning five hundred pounds a year by my own 
labour and talent. So be it, Paddy. Let us eat and 
drink, for to-morrow we will dine. This fortune 
may carry some little sunshine even to the benighted 
halls of the Agile Wolf. I make no complaint of 
destiny — nor of Mimi La Godiche, whose friends 
robbed me of a trumpery cigarette-box which is 
again upon my table while I write this letter. 

I say that I make no complaint of destiny — why 


The Show Girl 


5 


should I ? Let me but open this window, upon which 
Gabriel de Math has drawn in the best Trench chalk 
an impassioned sketch of an enypty champagne bottle 
— let me but open it and the world is at my feet — 
Paris of the golden domes, Paris of the dark eyes 
and the meaner streets — a great black Paris, a Paris 
of woods and gardens and river, of the mills which 
grind the grisettes’ corn, of the hives whence issue 
the noctambules and night hawks, whose prey has 
gossamer wings of greenbacks, whose morrow is 
never because of the eternal to-day. All this lies in 
the great bowl before me. I pour my fortune into 
the abyss and they strive for it far below, in a glitter 
of brass and spangles, in a flutter of white petticoats 
and silken hose and shirt fronts which would be 
better at the laundry. But none knows the truth 
— I am the mad Englishman who neither paints nor 
plays. And I am as poor as the rest of them — and 
God knows how poor that is. 

So, you see, Paddy, I have my consolations, and 
among others, as the papers have told you, the 
friendship of Mimi La Godiche. What a fine old 
cardboard tragedy they have made of it all! Did I 
not sally forth at midnight, armed with a blunder- 
buss and a scimitar to cut down the apaches who lurk 
beneath the shadow of la Galette? Did I not enter 
a cafe which the police are afraid to enter? and did 


6 


The Show Girl 


not these strong hands drag therefrom the brave file 
who had returned my stolen diamonds to me and was 
in danger because of her honesty? News “fitting to 
the night,” upon my word, “black, fearful, comfort- 
less and horrible.” Would for the sake of this 
Hector that it were the truth and nothing but the 
truth — but, my dear Paddy, there’s little of the 
truth in it at all, as these indentures shall bear wit- 
ness. It’s as false as F’ifine of the Alcazar, and not 
half as pretty. 

You will remember that I have known Mimi La 
Godiche for some three months now. She is a 
pretty, round-limbed blonde, with a mop of tousled 
hair, eyes full of “fair speechless messages,” the ret- 
icence of Cleopatra, the youth of Cupid, the devilry 
of the whole Hue Champollion in the shape of her 
bewitching neck. 

I saw her first at the Fete de Neuilly. She stood 
upon a platform with a strong man, a juggler and a 
clown; and when she sang I determined that she 
should come to the Quat-Z-Arts and sing to the Bo- 
hemians of the Butte. Montmartre gave her the 
cold shoulder. Can you wonder that an audience 
which has heard Odette Dulac sing “Je suis Bete” 
should decline to hear Mimi La Godiche warble 
“Toujours l’amour,” in a dress that makes her look 
like a kitchen-maid and a voice that would befit a 


The Show Girl 


7 


Sunday-school? She came, she saw, she did not con- 
quer. I offered to send her back t#*^be lion-tamer, 
who is to her father, mother, uncle and brother — 
she declined the invitation, preferring to sit to Des- 
mond Barrymore, the American, and not a little de- 
lighted to earn her bread at so light a task. 

Now, my dear Paddy, you must tell me, for by 
all the kingdoms of the grisettes, I swear that I do 
not know what my obligations to this waif and stray 
may be. Must I pose as the philanthropist of the 
books, and send her to a convent at Brussels or a 
finishing school at Brighton? Should I plod pa- 
tiently beneath a soiled genealogical tree to discover 
if, in some remote slum of Paris, Lyons, or Mar- 
seilles, there may not be living a venerable kins- 
woman, perhaps newly released from prison, who will 
harbour her? Or shall I remember that the devil 
knows his own and will not forget her? 

I cannot tell you. She is earning an honest liv- 
ing with Desmond Barrymore, and will come to no 
harm there. Life and laughter and the light of 
cities are her whole existence. And imagine the talk 
of the Hue Pigalle repeated in the cloister or the 
argot Montmartrois at church parade in that “fayre 
town of Brighton !” It can’t be done, Paddy. I 
am the victim of my own enthusiasm, and Mimi will 
return to her lion-tamer no more. 


8 


The Show Girl 


Meanwhile, there are the thieves. The papers 
have told you that I, a young English student, study- 
ing the sculptor’s art in the great ateliers of Mont- 
martre, was robbed at the Quat-Z-Arts Ball of a gold 
and diamond cigarette-case worth a hundred pounds. 
At the best it is a half truth — at the worst an ig- 
norant lie. 

None knows better than yourself, Paddy, the 
deserved fame of the Quat-Z-Arts Ball. Here 
America does not come, nor Sir Lord Moneybags 
enter. There is no ticket more prized in all Paris 
than a ticket for the Quat-Z-Arts; there is not a 
festivity in any ballroom in Europe more decently 
conducted for those who see eye. to eye with these 
Bohemians of the Butte, and understand them. 
True, Venus in many shapes rides sky-high upon the 
gilded floats; you sup upon the floor from the con- 
tents of paper bags thrown down to you from the 
galleries above; but of the vulgar things to be done 
in London or New York by those who are merely 
vulgarian, you do none at all. So, my dear Paddy, 
I certainly did not lose my pretty cigarette-case 
(given to me, you remember, by old Bardon, the 
banker, for dragging his beloved “cheeild” from the 
Solent) at the Quat-Z-Arts Ball; nor would anyone 
outside a lunatic asylum puzzle his head to say where 
I did lose it. 


The Show Girl 


9 


Perhaps it was in a cab on my way to the Abbaye 
de Theleme, that sordid supper-house of the Butte, 
to which one resorts in sheer despair of sleep and soli- 
tude; perhaps later on at the Capitol, to which, I 
remember, Mistress Mimi would be conducted with 
Ame Decroix, the poet; Honore de Villefort, the 
Chevalier; and that bald-headed old rogue of a per- 
petual mendicant, Georges Oleander, who writes the 
revues. I neither know nor care; for my memories 
are of a night of life, and colour, and music; of a 
scene glittering with dresses and the pictures that 
great artists have given to their fellows — of music 
which should have moved the feet of every dancing 
faun that ever trod a pedestal — of wit and laughter, 
the veritable elixir vitce. 

This is no psalm-singing screed that I write to 
you, Paddy, nor are you the man for the paeans of 
self-righteousness. I will confess without shame 
to certain bons moments . Though I am not, and 
never have been, the lover of Mimi La Godiche, 
there have been instants of the madness in which I 
have played a madman’s part. 

But Mimi neither misunderstands me nor is mis- 
led. Did I but drop the shabbiest of handkerchiefs, 
she would become my mistress to-morrow; but I 
have no intention of soiling fine linen in this way, 
nor do I contemplate such a charming menage as she 


10 


The Show Girl 


would certainly disgrace. When I embraced her 
at the Quat-Z-Arts, the floats of my Lady Venus 
were already sky-high and the parquet a sea of bil- 
lowy chiffon — but I did not do so to give her an 
opportunity of stealing my cigarette-case (as that 
old blackguard Georges Oleander will have it), nor 
will all the avocats in Paris convince me that this 
was the moment of my loss. Ho, my dear friend, 
it was at the Abbaye, I repeat, and if not at the 
Abbaye, then at the Capitol. 

I am asking you to keep this fact in mind that 
what follows after may be better understood. You 
know me too well to suppose that I would have cried 
to high Heaven for the loss of a twopenny-halfpenny 
diamond box, or even be complaining of it to any 
man. But it was my misfortune to be asked for a 
cigarette out of that same by the prince and father 
of all beggars, Maitre Georges Oleander aforesaid, 
and so, in a moment of surprise, I discovered the 
loss. 

What next is the tale, Paddy ? You will guess it 
first time — that Mimi La Godiehe had thrown her 
fair arms about me, not in an ecstasy of love or pas- 
sion, but purely to pocket the case and enjoy the 
contents at her leisure. This I had from the Cheva- 
lier Villefort not a week ago. On Sunday I learned 
for the first time the true value of a mendacious 


The Show Girl 


11 


tongue and what it may mean even here on the 
“mountain” whence you look down upon the domes 
of Paris. 

The scandal was everywhere. Remember that 
there is in Montmartre a great colony of artists, 
musicians and writers, not less honest, not less clean- 
living than the inhabitants of many a sanctimonious 
town in the country of your oppressor. These may 
esteem the marriage-tie lightly; but they hold love 
to be a sacred thing, and they would no more think 
of robbing their neighbour than of shooting the Pope. 

These had been good friends to Mimi La Godiche 
because of my patronage. But no sooner is the 
black word spoken than every door is shut upon her, 
skirts drawn aside, tables shifted, slander uttered in 
no mere whisper. They recalled her coming — the 
strong man of the Fete de Heuilly, the clown, the 
tights, the van, the vagrant’s life. A little more of 
it and they would have pushed her headlong over to 
the great congregation of grisettes, maquereaux and 
night-hawks who throng the cabarets of the Butte. 
In short, my dear Paddy, they would have made a 
criminal and something worse of her — and you know 
what that would mean among the savages of Mont- 
martre. Let me tell you next how I have come to 
save her from such a fate — if it be but for the 
moment — for, as Richter has told us, woman is the 


12 


The Show Girl 


most inconsistent compound of obstinacy and self- 
sacrifice with which we are acquainted. 

I have saved her. She is in this very room while 
I am writing this letter; but, Paddy, if she were to 
walk a hundred yards down the alley which has the 
honour to house me I would not answer for her life. 

To make this clear, let me return to the Sunday 
after “the crime” and to my own recreation upon 
that innocent day. A morning with Sabine Mont- 
erey and old Villefort upon the Seine at Poissy; 
lunch in a frock coat and glory with Lea d’ Alengon 
at her apartment in the Avenue de Malakoff; then to 
Longchamp; a little dinner at Armenonville, and 
afterwards the long journey home, the steep climb 
to the Butte and the card-box house which permits 
me to look down upon the sails of La Galette. 

Why I went so far that Sunday night I cannot 
tell you. There is still my apartment in the Hotel 
St. Paul open to me when I would return to civilisa- 
tion. But I think the amorous Lea had put thoughts 
of Mimi into my head, and, wondering if all were 
well with her, I returned to the Maison du bon Tabac 
and to my bed. Ten minutes after I had entered the 
house, came Choeolat, the messenger from the old 
Cafe of the Assassins, knocking as the devil knocked 
on old Luther’s door at Weimar. Then I knew that 
all was not well with Mimi, and down I went, the 


13 


The Show Girl 

black man upon my beels, vainly endeavouring in 
three languages to tell me what had happened. 

What a jargon it was, what a medley of all the 
elusive argot of the cabarets ! This much alone was 
clear — that Mimi La Godiche had got somehow into 
the Cafe of the Assassins (they call it the Lapin Agil 
to-day), and that if I did not get her out she certainly 
would be murdered. 

True, there was a dpi, or municipal guard, to 
protect her from the immediate fury of her friends; 
but these would force her presently to the pavement, 
and then God help her ! So much Chocolat, the 
messenger, declared as we hurried down the alley, 
passed Cerberus at the gate thereof, and plunged 
into the darkness of the labyrinth below. I could 
save Mimi La Godiche — the patron wished it ; 
madame, his wife, was of like opinion. The danger 
lay in the alleys — not in any house, and certainly not 
at the famous cabaret of the Agile Wolf. Upon 
this point Chocolat was emphatic. They could look 
after their own — the streets were another affair. 

Well, I reached the place at last, after as 
unpleasant a descent as ever led to Avernus, and 
entered the cafe just upon the stroke of midnight. 

You know the place; the dirty courtyard before 
it; the rude benches in the shed that serves for a 
concert-room; the horrid unshaven faces of men who 


14 


The Show Girl 


wear the mask of death; the savage ferocity in the 
women’s eyes. Of course, there are lights enough; 
lights and a rousing piano, and a chansonnier who 
lisps things we should be very sorry to repeat 
to-morrow. The fellow was singing nothing more 
virile than “Monsieur le Cure” when I came in, and, 
to be candid, not a soul there paid me a sou’s worth 
of attention. Remember that I was unknown in 
these places except as a poor devil of a sculptor 
trying to singe his wings in the candle of ambition. 
This reputation has been my protection hitherto, 
alike at the Maison du bon Tabac and in the alleys 
of the Butte. 

Here at the Lapin Agil I must lose it, finally 
and irreparably, as all the omens seem to say — and 
losing it, have no longer a home upon the Butte of 
Montmartre. 

De Courcy was singing when I entered the 
cabaret, and a bald-headed old man with a chalk- 
faced child, who should have been his daughter, 
appeared the only claque which the performer com- 
manded. Little Mimi La Godiche I spied out at once, 
sitting at a table with a huge ruffian they call the 
Mount upon the one side and Desmond Barrymore 
upon the other. I was glad to see Desmond there, 
and pushed my way over to him. Across the room 
there stood a company of as savage an appearance as 


The Show Girl 


15 


any defender of the Cafe des Assassins might desire 
— squat, burly, black-eyed brigands, fearful women, 
girls who saw the sun rise every day but rarely had 
seen it set. These were watching Mimi and the 
Mount as though the whole drama moved about 
them. Desmond Barrymore, however, did not 
appear to know what it was all about, and told me 
so immediately. 

“The man says he’s robbed,” he explained — 
pointing to the Mount with the stump of a tattered 
cigarette. “I guess he’s dreaming. Come right in, 
Henry, and help me to put the fear of God into 
him.” 

He made way for me upon the bench, and I sat 
down and began to ask Mimi about it. Her cheeks 
have not much colour in a common way, but they 
were now a beautiful crimson and there was light 
enough in her eyes to set the cafe on fire. 

“What’s up, Mimi?” I asked her. “Why did 
you send Chocolat barking to my door?” 

She kicked a pair of fat legs against the bench, 
and, leaning back, she laughed in the ruffian’s face 
as he bent down to catch her answer. 

" Ah , mes enfants ” she cried, imitating the 
inimitable Georges Tiercy in his famous song. “Ah, 
mes enfants — ce cochon de Jean-le-Mont a une 
ecrevisse dans le vol-au-vent ” — and by that she 


16 


The Show Girl 


meant (for the line is already grown grey) that the 
fellow who pestered her had a bee in his bonnet. 

“How did you come here?” I asked her. 

“In the automobile of Monsieur le Comte de 
Pigalle.” 

They laughed at this, for I need not tell you, 
Paddy, that the Rue Pigalle does not boast its 
Count, and that an automobile which could climb 
the Butte might set out to-morrow to vanquish 
Mont Blanc. 

“Ho, nonsense. Mimi . . . there has been a 
row. What is it all about?” 

Barrymore intervened, jerking a fine fat thumb 
towards the ruffian. 

“The fellow says she robbed him.” 

“Of what, Barrymore?” 

“Of a cigarette-case set in diamonds.” 

Again the cafe roared with laughter. A ciga- 
rette-case set with diamonds at the Lapin Agil ! Oh ? 
famous treasure! I, of course, knew the truth in 
an instant. Mimi La Godiche had stolen my 
property from the man who stole it from me. 

“What do you say to that, Mimi?” 

She looked at me as a child in wonder — never 
was there a cleverer little actress or one with a 
cooler head. 


The Show Girl 17 

“Do not be foolish, Monsieur Henry (ne faites 
pas des betises), I only smoke a pipe.” 

“And you, my friend ?” — this to the ruffian they 
call the Mount. 

But he flinched at the question, and drained a 
glass of filthy liquor before he answered it. 

“She stole the box. Do I steal with my own 
hands? Ho, monsieur, but the she-cats of Paris 
could rob the Bourse. I was walking to my seat 
when she pushed against me. Ask the ‘dpi* if it is 
not true? I will have her searched, I tell you . . . 
she shall give me back my property!” 

“Your property, good man ! Do you carry ciga- 
rette boxes set in diamonds?” 

“Monsieur, I am an honest man — this property 
was lost in Paris, and I would restore it to its right- 
ful owner.” 

“Then you will restore it to me immediately, for 
it is mine and was lost at the Quat-Z-Arts Ball, as 
you very well know.” 

Well, Paddy, this took him by the heels, so to 
speak, and laid him upon his back. I had been care- 
ful not to advertise the case, fearing a reputation 
for riches among the apaches of the Butte; but the 
cat was out of the bag this time and every ear intent. 
As for the ruffian, he was floored for the moment; 
but he recovered a second wind of argument pres- 


18 


The Show Girl 


ently, and, being both drunk and querulous, was 
by no means done with. 

"It is an affair for the police,” he exclaimed, 
lurching as he sat, and bringing his fist down with 
a smashing blow upon the table. "Ask the 'dpi* — 
she must go with me to the police-station and take 
the affair there. I am an honest man and I will not 
be robbed. You say that this is your case, mon- 
sieur — well, prove so much to the police and I shall 
have no more to say. But you shall prove it — I 
will make you, I, Jean-le-Mont — hear that, mon- 
sieur — I will make you prove it !” 

He stretched an arm across the table and pulled 
the lappet of my coat with clumsy vigour. I saw 
that an uproar was at hand, but determined to keep 
my temper as long as possible. Big as Desmond 
Barrymore and I are, we were no match for the 
black company upon the opposite side of the room — 
and there was a magazine which any foolish word 
might fire in an instant. So it was necessary to 
temporise and, above all things, to keep the mob 
quiet; in which endeavour I called for a bottle of 
wine and some cigars, and affected to make light of 
the fellow’s impudence. 

"You are talking nonsense,” I said. "My case 
had my name inside it — we can easily prove that. 
Drink a glass of wine with me and then come to the 


The Show Girl 


19 


station. What’s the hurry about? We sha’n’t run 
away, and I don’t suppose you have any engagement. 
How, isn’t that a fair offer, monsieur?” 

He muttered something, I know not what, and 
sank back to glower at the waiter Juno, who snapped 
the cork from a bottle and set it before me. Mimi, I 
observed, was still smiling; Desmond Barrymore 
playing with his cigarette as a man over-anxious, but 
not afraid. As for the canaille opposite, I perceived 
its hesitation, and did not fail to take its meaning. 
There could be no brawl permitted in the cabaret, 
but there might very well be a pretty affair outside. 
In a word, they waited for us to go, each believing 
that he or she would shortly become the possessor 
of a gold cigarette-case set with diamonds. This was 
the state of the game when the man they call Jean- 
le-Mont spoiled everything by a premature declara- 
tion of hostilities, both unexpected and maladroit. 
For what should he do but lurch to his feet, catch 
Mimi by both her slim arms, and begin to hug her 
like a bear; while he did not cease to shower upon 
her that unnameable abuse in common use upon the 
Butte. 

How, this was very unexpected, Paddy, and left 
the “backs” rather nonplussed. A table stood be- 
tween the pair — bottle and glasses had already gone 
crash to the floor. Had I struck at the man im- 


20 


The Show Girl 


mediately, I might have hit Mimi, and done her a 
mischief; it was impossible to get at the fellow’s 
legs or to secure so firm a grip upon his arms as would 
open them and release his prey. Luckily, Desmond 
is a man of some wit, and did not fail me. I saw 
him watching the pair with a droll expression upon 
his face; then he calmly put his cigarette under the 
giant’s nose, and held it there until the fellow turned 
upon him savagely and struck a Triton’s blow. Be- 
fore he could repeat it I had laid him on the floor 
with a counter that Molt of Cambridge taught me; 
and you could count the minutes before he rose 
again. 

Forgive me, Paddy, for thrusting upon you this 
plain tale of a tavern brawl. The papers have a 
“piece” about it, and that is my excuse. It will also 
permit you to understand tfle new role in which I 
find myself — that of brother, uncle, guardian, foster- 
father, tutor, friend to a tousled-haired nymph of 
the slums, for whom now I am solely responsible. 

Admittedly, there has been some personal humil- 
iation before this was arrived at. Your ready mind 
will depict the scene in the cabaret after that Jean-le- 
Mont lay upon the floor, and the “dpi” drew his 
sword and bawled murder. Upon my life, I thought 
the three of us were done for. The cries, the fierce 
oaths, the looks, the words of them ! And then upon 


The Show Girl 


21 


it all, the enraged patron forcing ns all to the street, 
swearing that he would have no murder in his house ; 
which, my dear Paddy, remembering that it used to 
be the Cafe of the Assassins, you must admit to be 
both illogical and disloyal. 

He said that we should go, and go it seemed we 
must. The place was in an uproar now; the steep 
street very soon became a pandemonium. I knew 
that the apaches were out, and I would tell you what 
I would tell no other man alive, that I had the fear 
of God in me down to my very toes. 

And what of this waif and stray, Mimi La 
Godiche, who had my cigarette-case upon her, and 
must, but for our protection, jostle with the ravening 
wolves at the door? I had never understood the 
child, and I understood her less in that moment — for 
there she was smiling still, or, stooping, as her trick 
was, to smooth her short dress over her knees; now 
bursting into laughter; now saying, “Ah, mes en- 
fants in that tone inimitable of the cabaret. And 
the ruffian at her feet had drawn a knife long enough 
to cut up the beef at Smithfield. Oh, my dear 
Paddy, what a harvest of the green years as Jehan 
Rictus would paint them for us in those immortal 
verses which my countrymen so rarely understand ! 

This babel of sounds endured five full and dread- 
ful minutes, I suppose, during which time the ladies 


22 


The Show Girl 


of the company lost no time in emptying the glasses 
of the gentlemen, and the gentlemen in picking the 
pockets of the ladies. When it became clear that 
we must go or face an enraged patron and three of 
the prettiest bullies in Montmartre, I whispered a 
word to Desmond to stand all close until we reached 
the street, and then to go as calmly and with as 
little concern as might be toward my box of a house 
upon the height. 

Granted that this was the uninventive hope of 
a man who certainly believed he would find a knife 
in him shortly; but, Paddy, what better plan could 
you have named, or by what road did wisdom lie? 

We had to go out into that darkness of the gutter, 
where the wolves were waiting, and to go upon the 
instant. No excuse, no entreaty seemed to modify 
the temper of the ruffian, who feared the police, and 
would have none of us. For my part, I preferred 
the unknown dangers of the pavement to the clubs 
of Chocolat and the patron ; and, although a scene 
in Thiers recurred to me, when the prisoners from 
the Abbey were driven forth to slaughter in those 
fateful September massacres, I chose to whistle one 
of Legay’s songs rather than to recite it. Then, 
putting my arm about Mistress Mimi’s waist, I 
dragged her from the place, and went pell-mell to the 
fray. E'heu, Paddy, what a moment to live ! what 


The Show Girl 23 

a pretty episode in the life of a young gentleman 
come to Paris to study the sculptor’s art ! 

We were in the thick of it, then, and no mistake 
at all about the matter. Fifty at least of the choicest 
blackguards of the Butte waited in the alley and 
swarmed about us instantly. I felt their hands all 
over me like mice upon a sack of com. One rogue 
thrust his great fingers into my waistcoat pocket, and 
had the satisfaction of taking therefrom an American 
time-piece of the value of three shillings and six- 
pence; another robbed me of a wooden pencil in a 
tin case; a third of a couple of five-franc pieces and 
some small change. This plunder was far from being 
what they wanted. J ust as the vultures loom myster- 
iously upon the horizon when a man sits down to die 
by the wayside, so did they appear at this talk of 
gold and diamonds. 

Had there been but two or three there gathered 
together, I don’t doubt they would have dealt with 
us as men deal with chickens at Easter ; but their very 
numbers defeated a set purpose, and the lights of the 
cabaret forbade a murder. For a little while we 
swayed about as a ship caught in a vortex ; the lamps 
shone down upon faces besotten with drink or fired 
by greed ; I could see the room behind us, the figure 
of the patron, who still gesticulated, the gaunt form 
of Jean-le-Mont, now risen to his feet; and it seemed 


24 


The Show Girl 


to me to take the place of a pleasant harbour one 
had quitted in despair. Then I think a ruffian tried 
to pull me down from behind ; hut the press was too 
close, and I caught his hand in mine and went near 
to breaking his wrist. This was a mistake, for he 
also possessed a knife, and drew it, and it needed 
an iron hand upon his throat to silence him. 

I am going deeper than I meant into these police- 
court news, Paddy, chiefly that you may understand 
my present difficulty with Mimi La Godiche. Let 
me tell you that when the fun really began, when fists 
were busy and hats were flying down the Butte, when 
the women shrieked and fled and the men called upon 
their fellows to make an end of us, I discovered that 
she had friends, even among such as these, that she 
could call them by their gutter-names and that they 
would answer her. It may be that many of them 
hung back just because it was Mimi of the booths 
and the fetes foraines, and by no chance could she 
be credited with the possession of sixpence; but, the 
reflection apart, my spirits sank when I heard them 
recognise her, and a sense of degradation, impossible 
to define, afflicted me anew. 

What a position for Henry Gastonard to be in — 
self-sought, inevitable, the price of this gipsy’s game 
upon the Butte ; the consequence of a chosen masquer- 
ade and a self-imposed war upon civilisation! 


The Show Girl 


25 


Were there not a thousand devils of my Saxon 
self-respect crying at my elbow to have done with 
it — to pitch them a handful of money — to say to 
them, “There is your sister in the arts; take her by 
the hand and lead her to her home 2” A flash of 
thought it may have been, while I dealt with the gen- 
tlemen of the pavement and calculated the chances 
with a greater precision; hut there it was, and while 
it ran strong in my head, the girl herself lay almo^l 
in my very arms, smiling still, a very gamin enjoying 
a brawl as a common incident in her daily life. Do 
you wonder, Paddy, that I clung to my wreckage 
and refused to part with it to any other robber upon 
the shore? By heaven and earth, I swear she is 
the best plucked J un that ever wore a red silk stock- 
ing or showed it on a booth to a gaping multitude. 
And that you shall come to believe for yourself pres- 
ently — when I take you fifty paces further from the 
cabaret and show you in a line just why we were not 
murdered. 

Do you remember the Rue St. Vincent, that nar- 
row lane by the Assassins, with the great black but- 
tresses and the dingy oil-lamp we used to deride to- 
gether ? Well, it was just by there that we seemed in 
for the worst ; just by the very corner that you would 
not have paid the half of a brass farthing for our 
chances. 


26 


The Show Girl 


I had as good as given it up, and fallen to won- 
dering what it feels like to have six inches of steel 
in your vitals while twenty hands are picking your 
pockets and twenty more are rifling your shoes. That 
this was premature, the unexpected but quite gentle- 
manly appearance of some fifteen agile sergents de 
ville immediately assured me. They had been 
fetched, it seemed, by the “cipi,” or municipal guard, 
at the cabaret, who, while he would not have lifted 
a finger to save Mimi La G-odiche, was by no means 
willing that an Englishman should be papered to- 
morrow, or found drowned upon the following morn- 
ing. Thus the company, armed to its very teeth, 
and thus the rats scuttling to their holes, the women 
left to slither down the steep, the men crying that 
Mimi La Godiche was une guepe , and that they would 
settle with her upon another occasion. 

I thanked the guard, Paddy; thanked Desmond 
Barrymore for his kindness to the girl ; and bidding 
him “good night” (it should have been good morn- 
ing), I climbed the mountain to that verdant alley 
wherein my home lies, and took Mimi to the parlour 
with me. Her first act was to return me my dia- 
monds. I need not particularise as to where she had 
hidden them, or what was her inspiration. She is 
here as I write this, like a dog upon my carpet. She 
has been for twenty hours almost in the same posi- 


The Show Girl 


27 


tion — but what am I going to do with her, what pro- 
vision make for her, or how am I going to smuggle 
her in safety from this mount of thieves, I know, 
my dear Paddy, no more than your estimable self. 

So let me have your consolations. All places 
are filled with fools, says Cicero — but there are but 
two at the Maison du bon Tabac, and one is Mimi 
La Godiche and the other — 

Yours eternally, 

Henry Gastonard. 


CHAPTER II. 


[The response of Paddy O’Connell, of Glenda- 
lough, County Wicklow, to his friend, Henry 
Gastonard of the Maison du bon Tabac at Paris.] 

Glendalough, County Wicklow, 
May 18th, 1905. 

Dear Henry, — Your letter is received. I gather 
therefrom two facts: — 1. That you are making a 
fool of yourself in Paris. 2. That this occupation 
is congenial to you and the lady of the circus, upon 
whom you appear to have bestowed your patronage. — 
Believe me to be, My dear Henry, 

Yours sincerely, 

Paddy O’Connell. 


28 


CHAPTER III. 


[A letter from the same brief author addressed to 
the Reverend Arthur Warrington of Beldon, 
Suffolk.] 


Glendalough, County Wicklow, 
May 18th, 1905. 

Reverend Sir, — Your request that I would 
favour you with such news as I may from time to 
time receive from my friend Henry Gastonard 
permits me to assure you that he is now established 
in Paris, and appears, by his diligent habit and 
assured gifts, to be doing all that will presently 
entitle him to the permanent possession of the for- 
tune, conditionally bequeathed to him by his late 
father, Henry Gastonard, of London and Bordeaux. 

My dear Sir, 

Yours very faithfully, 

The O’Connell of Glendalough. 


29 


CHAPTER IV. 


[Henry Gastonard continues the story in a letter to 

his friend Paddy O’Connell.] 

The Hotel St Paul, Paris. 

May 24th, 1905. 

Dear Paddy, — Permit me to ignore the flatter- 
ing document I had the honour to receive from you 
three days ago. 

Friendship, my dear Paddy, calls for something 
more than a pious expression of opinion upon the 
reason or conduct of a friend. It demands a sympa- 
thetic endeavour to understand, and an unshaken 
determination to accept such facts as are confided 
to us and call for our judgment. To tell a man he 
is a fool is often to tell him the truth. But I am 
not aware of many who have become less foolish for 
the knowledge, or have derived any consolation 
whatever from so bald an utterance. 

How, Paddy, you know as well as I do that you 
are all agog for further news of Mimi La Godiche; 
and were you in Paris this little chit of the booths 
would have your warm friendship, and you would 
30 


The Show Girl 


31 


lay scalps upon the green should any defame her. 
Cannot I see you with your feet upon an historic 
mantel-shelf, and your eyes (so far as tobacco smoke 
will permit) upon a regal ceiling, reading that same 
letter for a second time, and willing to barter all 
Ireland and the people thereof for one week of the 
Butte, one month of this rolling world of gilt and 
tinsel and all its spangled joys. Admit the truth of 
it, and write me something sensible. For, Paddy, 
I have need of you — there is the devil to pay, and 
the game grows interesting. 

You will remember that I left Mimi La Godiche 
upon my hearthrug. Barrymore had left us; the 
time was the early morning of the day; the canaille 
of the Assassins had gone God knows where. Save 
for the old soldier, who is at once my valet-de-cham- 
bre, butler, cook, housemaid, and scullery wench, 
there was no one with me in the Maison du bon 
Tabac. 

Depict the scene, Paddy, and bear with a recital 
of my virtues. A room as large as an opera box; 
about its walls the drawings of Caran d’Ache, Henri 
Riviere, and Willette; a couple of armchairs, as 
ragged as the beggars at the door of St. Eustache; 
a yacht’s piano bang against the wall; a buffet with 
all the drinks that are not good for us; the very 
worst novels littering all the tables; cigarettes and 


32 


The Show Girl 

cigars everywhere; pipes in all the niches — such is 
the mountain home of Henry Gastonard, gentleman. 

And upon the hearthrug of this charming apart- 
ment, style Louis de Montmartre, the tousled-haired 
Mimi squatting like any lady of the harem, her legs 
crossed, her feathered hat in her hand, her cheeks 
as rosy as a picture from a Christmas-book. 

How, Paddy, I have told you something of Mimi 
the Simpleton; but, to be as frank as the priest of 
Clanconnell, ? tis precious little that I myself know 
of her, anyway. I can no more tell you whether she 
be virtuous or otherwise than recite ten chapters 
of the Koran. This is a difficulty, to be sure, which 
my friends of the Hill will never understand. I can 
hear the roar of laughter which would attend its 
expression either in the neighbourhood of Heuilly or 
in that of la Galette. Mimi La Godiche virtuous! 
Then was Catherine of Russia a latter-day saint, and 
Lucretia herself as misunderstood as all the his- 
torians would now have us to believe. This would 
be the opinion of the Butte and of Heuilly. It is 
not my opinion — I cannot tell you why; nor do I 
trouble myself for reasons. 

She sat upon my hearthrug, I say, her legs 
crossed and her great feathered hat in her hand. 
When I questioned her, her answers were often 
monosyllables; sometimes nods and smiles; long 


The Show Girl 33 

sentences but rarely. Of her past she appeared to 
know nothing at all. Her birthplace she named as 
Vendome, but was not sure of it. She could tell me 
nothing of her childhood; the Fair she spoke of 
with dread; the lion-tamer Cassadore stood to her 
for all terrors past, present, and to come. She 
would have burned her hand in the fire rather than 
return to him. 

“Have you no remembrance of your father ?” I 
asked her. 

She shook her head many times, as one w r ho 
wished to think but could not. 

“And your mother?” 

“There was someone at Orleans, Monsieur 
Henry, and after that Cassadore. Oh, Cassadore 
always, I assure you.” 

“You must be able to tell me more than that, 
Mimi. Somewhere, somewhere in your life, there 
was a woman who was kind to you. How, don’t you 
remember when?” 

“I remember a very old lady, Monsieur Henry — 
that would have been at Orleans. And then, the 
road — the great, white, open road — so many days, 
so many nights . . . and after that Cassadore always 
until you came, Monsieur Henry.” 

“Why did you not run away, Mimi?” 

“To whom should I run?” 


34 


The Show Girl 

“ Anywhere away from Cassadore. You are 
young . . . you can work; why did you not leave 
him?” 

“It was impossible, monsieur — as well ask the 
Abbe to run away from his church.” 

“You mean that the life had become necessary 
to you?” 

“Yes, yes, I mean that — would you put me in 
the kitchen, Monsieur Henry?” 

“Certainly not, Mimi — but, you see, you can’t 
stop any longer in Montmartre, and what then?” 

Her face clouded, but only for an instant, 

“I shall go away with you, Monsieur Henry.” 

“Why should you go with me?” 

“Because I do not wish to go with Cassadore.” 

“There are plenty of others who would take you 
away, Mimi. Why do you think of me?” 

“ I cannot tell you, Monsieur Henry — you must 
know yourself why it is.” 

“And if I do, what then? Suppose I cannot take 
you away?” 

“I shall ask Mr. Barrymore.” 

“Oh, Barrymore would not be of any use to you.” 

“Then I shall go back to Cassadore.” 

“It wouldn’t be safe for you to stop in Mont- 
martre now — I suppose you understand that much, 
Mimi?” 


The Show Girl 


35 


She laughed a little at the suggestion. 

“Jean-le-Mont is very angry/’ she said, “I am 
afraid of Jean-le-Mont.” 

“When did you steal my cigarette-case, Mimi; 
how did you know that Jean-le-Mont had it?” 

“He came to Mr. Barrymore’s atelier three days 
ago — the Italian who makes the models told me that 
Jean had the box. At the Lapin Agil I gave him 
a rose, Monsieur. Henry, and then put my arms about 
his neck. Ah, the droll — he discovered it at once, 
but he did riot wish to tell because the others would 
know and rob him afterwards. Then Mr. Barrymore 
came in because he saw me there, and I told him, 
and we sent for you ” 

“And this was the first time you have stolen 
anything, Mimi?” 

“Monsieur Henry, you know that it is.” 
***** 

Observe, Paddy, the reiteration of this. I know 
that she is virtuous; I know that she is honest. Ho 
reasons given or asked, as they say in the thieves’ 
advertisements. Upon my word of honour, the good 
faith of it is astonishing! For I do know, Paddy 
. . . and I would stake my fortune (or what is 

left of it) upon the truth of my astonishing creed. 


36 


The Show Girl 


I shall not fatigue you with further particulars 
of this amazing morning. For a couple of hours, 
perhaps, I slept upon my bed, and Mimi upon the 
hearthrug; but at six o’clock I waked her, and stop- 
ping only for coffee and a roll, I was out of the house 
by seven and upon my way to the Paris of law and 
of civilisation. All my instinct told me that the 
thieves of the Butte would make short work of Mimi 
La Godiche if she remained in their neighbourhood. 
Let her go to the old haunt this night, and a knife 
in the back or a collarette of rope would certainly 
be her reward. You know Montmartre; you know 
the particular kind of blackguard and of blackguard- 
ess it can vomit from its cavernous and detestable 
mouth. From these I fled with Mimi at my side — 
whither, the great Saint Christopher, patron of 
travellers, alone might .tell me. 

You are aware that I have an apartment at the 
Hotel St. Paul, and thither first I took the child 
in the hope that inspiration would come and a swift 
solution of a pretty problem be found. Be sure the 
excellent 'patron stared not a little, and that Madame, 
his wife, sniffed more of the morning air than had 
filled her ancient lungs for many a day. But a 
better entertainment was that provided by Narisse of 
the Faubourg St. Honore, who came round with his 
hand-maidens to dress her, and must take my direc- 


The Show Girl 37 

tions three times before assuring himself finally of 
the madness of this English traveller. 

Oh, Paddy, cannot you hear this man as he ex- 
claims to heaven upon the feathers of Montmartre, 
and sees a national infamy in the fine, if tattered 
stuffs of Belleville? No doubt I should have gone 
not “Chez Marisse” but the Magazin du Louvre; 
there bought not silk and chiffon but good, honest 
serges, a hat to. fit a governess and lace suitable to 
the deaconess of a Sunday-school. But, Paddy, I am 
a man, and I know the name but of one costumier in 
all Paris, and he is ETarisse, and he made of Mimi La 
Godiche a veritable beauty in less time than you or 
I could finish a rubber of bridge at the club. Ah, 
these mad Englishmen — they still exist it appears, 
and blessed is Paris because of them! And what 
shall be said for the girl herself, and what must she 
do upon the instant but sing the man a song after the 
fashion of Jehan Rictus, just because of the clothes 
he had put upon her back. Believe me, when I tell 
you that the models themselves came near to joining 
in the chorus, and that Rarisse was speechless before 
the end of the second verse. 

Mimi, then, is dressed and in her right mind. 
Will you follow me as I lead her forth about the 
hour of twelve o’clock, and ask myself, what next? 
There are many in Paris who know me, and not a 


38 


The Show Girl 

few who stared with some astonishment. Whatever 
the costumier’s art, my dear Paddy, it cannot dis- 
guise the walk, the airs, the manner of the Butte. 
I am a person of some sensibility out of doors, and 
I object to that freedom which grips you hysterically 
by the arm, at odd intervals, to drag you to a shop 
window and exclaim upon a rope of pearls which 
would ruin a Maharajah, or an emerald bracelet 
none but a Rothschild could buy. It is not a joy 
to me when my companion has the wit and the lan- 
guage which silences enterprising cabmen or calls 
for the retort discourteous of the foot-passenger who 
has been obstructed. Publicity has no charms for 
me; I prefer to give the wall to the humourists and 
to go in obscurity. 

We lunched at the Cafe of the Cascade in the 
Bois. There was a goodly company present, and 
“her ladyship” fell in love with the Baroness 
Sechard, who was with Pechala, of the Spanish Em- 
bassy. I think the grand manners of many of these 
far from grand dames somewhat astonished her; but 
the size of the asparagus tickled her sense of hu- 
mour, and the bill was ever in her mind. 

“What will happen to us if you cannot pay the 
bill, Monsieur Henry?” 

a We shall go to prison, Mimi.” 

“Cassadore went to prison once — at Chalons-sur- 


The Show Girl 39 

Marne — I do not wish, to go to prison, Monsieur 
Henry.” 

“Then we must try to find some money, Mimi. 
How much have you now?” 

The question should not have been put, for Mimi 
carries her money where she carried my cigarette- 
case, and made no secret of the matter. 

I was hut just in time to prevent a display which 
might have brought us the bill on the spot, and, as 
it was, Etienne, the waiter, grinned from ear to ear 
as he floated to us with a sole a la Yictorine. 

“Did they not tell you in the Rue Pigalle that 
I am rich, Mimi?” 

“You could never be rich, Monsieur Henry; you 
are not clever enough.” 

“But, Mimi, am I not a sculptor?” 

This appeared to her a droll saying. She laughed 
quite honestly and again appealed to my candour. 

“You know that you will never be a sculptor; 
you have no talent, Monsieur Henry; even I have 
more talent than you. Besides, if you were” — she 
added wisely — “how poor we should be.” 

“It is not good to be poor in Paris, Mimi.” 

“It is not good to be poor anywhere, Monsieur 
Henry.” 

“But if one has no way to get a living — as I have 
not, what then, Mimi ?” 


40 


The Show Girl 


“Oh, then one sleeps at the Hotel of the Belle 
Etoile. I have stayed there often when I used to 
go to the Eetes. It is a very large hotel, and you 
can see the stars while you lie in bed.” 

“Would you go back there, Mimi?” 

“Jesu — no; why do you speak of it when one is 
no longer hungry, Monsieur Henry?” 

I did not pursue the subject further, but paid 
the bill and went out with her to the Bois. A shabby 
cab made the usual grand tour with us and helped 
us to pass a pleasant hour. Perhaps it astonished 
me to discover that the Bois impressed her but little — 
but then she had been accustomed to the spangles all 
her life and could make little of a passable equipage 
with a fat Baroness in it, or a costly motor driven by 
a man who looked like an Oneida Indian. Her ex- 
clamations were few but her observation unfailing. 
She detected me at once when I nodded to Lea 
d’Alengon, who drove a pair of cream-colored ponies 
near the Cascade. 

“Why did that lady look so angry, Monsieur 
Henry ? Are you in love with her ?” 

“Why should I be, Mimi? She is the wife of 
Captain d’Alen§on of the Engineers.” 

“But she is in love with you — I am sure of it. 
And she is very angry with you.” 

“Then I cannot help it. Let us get out and walk, 


The Show Girl 


41 


Mimi, and ask ourselves where we are going to stay- 
to-night. That will be more interesting than Madame 
d’Alengon.” 

“You wish to see her pass again — is not that the 
reason, Monsieur Henry ?” 

Well, of course it was, and she had guessed wisely 
enough; but what was I to say to her? Lea is one 
of my virtues, as I have told you before, Paddy. 
When I wish to balance the hooks of all the morali- 
ties, cash, day and ledger, Lea d’Alengon stands for 
the most valuable of my assets. She is too clever to 
be anything else, and yet you might call her the most 
amorous woman and one of the most dangerous in 
Paris. Just a hundred times, perhaps, has she ad- 
vised me to get out of this delectable country and go 
back to England. I might have done so hut for her 
promise to visit me there upon an early occasion. 
Be sure, Paddy, that I have no desire whatever to cut 
the Captain’s throat merely to prove myself a good 
Parisian. Lea is charming as a friend. She would 
be all the malignities impersonified otherwise. 

I should tell you that I had recognised her when 
she passed me, and that this astonished her consider- 
ably. It is considered less than nothing at all in 
Paris to drive in the Bois with a cocotte — hut to 
recognise your lady friends when thus employed 
must be named little less than an infamy. So here 


42 


The Show Girl 


was a pretty problem for this majestic Astarte with 
the raven locks and the liquid black eyes and all the 
langour of the trained voluptuary. Either I wished 
to insult her or it were possible that my companion 
might be introduced. This she must have told herself, 
for the chariot reappeared presently and was drawn 
up at the pavement not fifty yards from the place 
where we stood. 

“Bon jour, Madame d’Alengon.” 

“Bon jour, Monsieur Gastonard.” 

“I have a story for you; when will a good com- 
rade hear it ?” 

“Why not at five o’clock; my husband is at Va- 
lerien. Is it a story of the theatre, Monsieur Gas- 
tonard ?” 

“It is a story of virtue, madame.” 

We laughed together. This poor old Pantaloon 
Virtue still provokes a smile — if his name be ever 
mentioned — in such saloons as Lea d’Alengon and her 
kind have made famous. Some spirit of sheer dev- 
ilry must have prompted me to this confidence, 
Paddy; but behind it lay a firm belief in the sagacity 
of this shrewd woman of the world and in her hon- 
esty. She would place Mimi the Simpleton in some 
possible situation — I had not a moment’s doubt of it. 

How we laughed together over the whole story 
when I went to her rooms an hour later. Mimi, 


The Show Girl 


43 


meanwhile, had been dispatched to the Hotel St. 
Paul, and there entrusted to the safe custody of la, 
patronne. I myself sat in a wonderful cradle chair 
and watched Lea pour out really excellent tea from a 
Chinese pot that should have been behind glass. She 
had changed her gown for a delicate robe of lace and 
chiffon, and thrust the prettiest pair of feet in all 
Paris from a petticoat over which a costumier must 
have shed tears of joy. 

“Who is this girl V 9 she asked me. 

I told her that I did not know. 

“Why has she become virtuous V 9 

“A natural condition, Lea; why is not marble 
chalk ?” 

Observe, Paddy, that Lea and I have been some 
months at the point when “Monsieur” or “Madame” 
provokes ridicule, and no formality clouds our brutal 
frankness. Had it been otherwise I could not have 
spoken to her of Mimi La Godiche at all. 

“Let me tell you the girl's story,” I said, “or 
what I know of it. Six months ago she was per- 
forming outside the walls of Paris with a monster of 
a man named Cassadore, whose riches are three lions 
and whose wardrobe a pair of spangled tights. I 
was in the tent when this child was taken into the 
cages with this man, and I did not fail to remark 
two facts; one, that she was absolutely lacking in a 


. 44 The Show Girl 

sense of fear, and, secondly, that she might become 
eventually one of the most beautiful women in Paris. 
Five francs judiciously expended obtained an intro- 
duction to her — a hundred francs bought her of the 
lion-tamer. Rejoice, my dear Lea, that in our society 
women are not sold for a hundred nor for ten hundred 
francs, or who can tell what I might not hid for you 
at an auction. In Mimi’s case the bargain was soon 
made. After all, the tamer had a dozen girls of 
her station ready to be driven into the cages at his 
nod — what was this girl to him ? I bought her and 
took her to the Butte. Febry, of La Galette, gave her 
a chance to get hissed upon his stage, and she did 
not disappoint him. I tried her again, paying a 
thousand francs for the privilege at the Quat-Z-Arts 
and the Coq d’Or. Again, my dear lady, she was a 
hopeless failure. No femme de chambre acting in 
the kitchen could have failed so dismally. And yet 
I continue to believe in her; my faith is unshaken. 
I am ready to declare that she will become a great 
actress, astonish Paris, and end in an apartment not 
a third of a mile removed from the Arc de Triomphe 
or the Avenue Marigny. It is this faith which brings 
me now to the house of the charming Lea d’Alengon. 
I come, foi d’honneur , simply to seek a salve to my 
vanity. How shall I get this child taught? Where 
shall I place her while she is being taught ? You, of 


The Show Girl 


45 


all my friends, can best advise me upon that point. 
Do so, and you shall not find a more grateful man in 
Paris to-day.” 

Well, I could see that I had impressed her, but 
I had not convinced her, as the next question proved. 

“Why do you say that the child is virtuous?” 
she asked me. 

“Because I know her to be so,” was my retort. 
“Put your hand upon the marbles at the Madeleine 
and will they bum you ? It is true that a fire might 
be conceived of such a nature as to melt your marble 
and cause it to run as liquid steel — but, my dear 
Lea, we are not talking of the forges, but of the facts. 
This child is virtuous because she is utterly devoid 
of any desire to be anything else. The wisest up on 
the Butte recognise the truth and are proud of it.” 

“And now these very people drive her out. Did 
you not tell me that she cannot return to Montmartre, 
Henry ?” 

“Certainly not — at least, to the only quarter of 
Montmartre where it would be possible for her to live. 
The thieves have marked her down — she would not 
be alive a week if she remained up there.” 

“And you propose ?” 

“My dear Lea, nothing of the kind. I have no 
matrimonial intentions, believe me. It is you who 
will propose.” 


46 


The Show Girl 

She laughed a little wickedly. The talk had 
drifted apart from my idea, and I could not but be 
amused by her sudden volte face . 

“Louis does not return from Valerien until to- 
morrow,” she said quickly. “I am supposed to dine 
with my sister Lucille. Where are you going to take 
me, Henry?” 

“Alone, Lea?” 

She looked me straight in the face. 

“Let us ask the Cure of the Madeleine.” 

“By all means. And while we dine we will make 
plans for Mimi.” 

“Let us dine on the island,” she cried, ignoring 
it; “there is the safest place in Paris.” 

“I will he at the Cascade at a quarter to seven. 
Of course, it may he a tragedy.” 

“The tragedies, my dear Henry, are always for 
to-morrow.” 

And so, Paddy, amiable fool that I was, I con- 
sented. It will he no surprise to you to hear that the 
Cure of the Madeleine had another appointment, and 
could not turn up. But of this dinner and of all the 
absurdities which followed upon it, I will write to- 
morrow. 

Meanwhile, find me, my dear fellow, your friend, 

II AERY. 


CHAPTER V. 


[Henry Gastonard writes to Paddy O’Connell telling 

him the story of a dinner and a challenge.] 

Hotel St. Paul, Paris. 

May 30th, 1905. 

Dear Paddy, — This is to tell you that I go out 
with Bernard d’Alengon somewhere about daybreak 
to-morrow, and that when I write again, Paris will 
be in possession of a pretty scandal. 

I am not joking, my dear Paddy. A more 
serious human being than Henry Gastonard does 
not exist in all this city to-night. I am to fight 
Bernard d’Alengon, and I am to fight him some- 
where in the neighbourhood of the Bois at five 
o’clock to-morrow morning. The affair is as irrev- 
ocable as the sunset I have just witnessed from the 
Chalets du Cycle, where Mademoiselle Mimi has 
given me tea and recited, to the great astonishment 
of waiters and cyclists alike, the first lesson she 
received this morning from Pelletier, of the Con- 
servatoire. 

So, if you please, has this great question of the 

47 


48 


The Show Girl 


hour been settled. A woman’s shrewd opinion has 
backed up a mere man’s idea that something may 
be made of Mimi the Simpleton, something at least 
ventured in her interests. The suspicion that this 
chit of the fetes for dines may yet startle Paris is so 
much an obsession where I am concerned that I 
Lave willingly agreed to place her with Pelletier for 
twelve months and to see what comes of it. He is 
too clever a man to try to make a silk purse out of 
a sow’s ear. He will train her for the Vaudeville 
or the Palais Poyal, and if he cannot make a success 
of her, then is she lost indeed. She lodges mean- 
while in a little English pension near the Louvre, 
and God help its inmates if she have the mind to 
misbehave herself! 

Be sure that for me this is a closed book, and 
that I am vory unlikely, when once this other 
folly is over, to see or hear of Mistress Mimi again. 
The whim of a moment has given her a chance in 
Paris; the whim of another will banish her from my 
recollection when, as must be, if I am not killed to- 
morrow morning, I set out to save my fortune from 
my cousin and to make those five hundred pounds 
per annum which will enable me to hold it. 

You will remember, Paddy, that when last I 
wrote to you, I was about to dine in blessed seclusion 
with that amiable but charming woman Lea d’Alen- 


49 


The Show Girl 

Qon. Providence and a far from belle Americaine 
saved me from such an imprudence. The American 
lady, I understand, appeared just when Lea was 
wrestling with a refractory hat and an equally 
obstinate pyramid of her famous black hair. She 
carried a letter from Elise d’Alengon, the Captain’s 
sister, who is now in ISTew York, and could not, in 
decency, be denied. What Lea said, or, better still, 
what she thought, I leave you to guess; but she 
covered her retreat by asking her cousin Emilie, who 
is madly in love with young Derogy of the Chas- 
seurs, and by sending post haste for the cavalryman 
to join us. So we were five at the table instead of 
two, and we dined at Armenonville and not at 
the Cascade. 

I was glad of this — frankly glad. Lea is too 
good a friend of mine that I should ever wish her 
to become anything else. And remember, Paddy, 
that virtue is as much a matter of opportunity and 
of accident as of the commandment, both written 
and unwritten. To you alone would I confess my 
belief that it had been her intention to bring mat- 
ters to a crisis this night. Bernard was conveniently 
at Fort Valerien; her mother had gone to Tours to 
let their chateau to a Yankee from Vermont; I had 
come to her in a romantic mood and appealed to her 
upon the score of my interest in another woman — a 


50 


The Show Girl 

sure passport to intimacy. And then upon the top 
of it all the lady from New York, Jenny Middleton 
she called herself, with an accent to butter your 
bread and the eye of the eagle as it soars. Oh, we 
were a merry party, be sure ; and even cousin Emilie 
(who is married to a man of sixty as sour as vinegar 
and as yellow) made little of her cavalryman in such 
a presence. 

You know the dinner at the Armenonville, as 
good as it is dear, as chic as it is distant. We dis- 
cussed London restaurants with our soup; the Ver- 
ney scandal with our fish; the character of the 
American man with the entree and Mimi the Sim- 
pleton with the ices. Mrs. Middleton, I observed, 
was much interested in the character of my protegee 
and firm in her belief that I had made a fool of 
myself. 

“She will go back to the lion-tamer in a month,” 
she said, “and leave you with the bill for a keep- 
sake.” 

WTien Lea began her dissertation upon virtue, 
the lady from the West joined in the merriment, 
and I perceived that here was an American who, 
like others of her countrywomen, had no interest in 
Paris virtuous but much in Paris of the vices. It 
was cheerful to be done with it all at last, and to 
begin that momentous return which might land me 


The Show Girl 51 

either in an infamy or, at the best, destroy my 
friendship with the charming Lea. 

I say the fun began at Armenonville, and you 
will readily understand the nature of it. Lea did 
not disguise her intention to return in my cab — 
Emilie was equally insistent upon riding with the 
guardsman. For a little while we stood in the glitter 
of the lights, amid the most wonderfully dressed 
women in the world, scheming and planning to our 
different ends. First it would be Lea suggesting 
three cabs and a hurried departure — then the 
cavalryman gallantly volunteering to telephone for 
an automobile which would carry us all. Mrs. Mid- 
dleton herself providentially had special designs 
upon me, and watched her prey with a feline 
patience beautiful to behold. When two cabs 
appeared, I put the agitated daughter of Venus in 
the first of them, and by a ruse got Lea and Emilie 
and the cavalryman into the second. 

This was providential to be sure, if we may sup- 
pose Providence stoops to the mild intrigues of 
pretty Frenchwomen; for I may tell you that 
d’AlenQon himself did not stop the night at Fort 
Valerien, but was back in his own apartment at 
half-past nine, and detected there by Lea just at 
the moment she was waiting for me to appear and 
take her to supper as I had promised. Ah, the dear 


52 


The Show Girl 


soul, what a terrible five minutes she must have 
spent upon the pavement waiting for my cab ! But 
a blessed destiny had sent me on with the Stars, to 
say nothing of the Stripes, to the gates of the Jardin 
de Paris, whence a messenger carried a hasty note 
back to Lea telling her of the impossibility of it. 

Oh, these fair Americans! Do you know, Paddy, 
that if I were a man of genius, I would make the 
five hundred a year which my father’s Will demands 
just by catering for their naughtiness in Paris. Of 
course, the whole affair would have to be a sham, 
as unlike the true Paris as Bayswater is unlike Lon- 
don, and no more vicious than a magic-lantern show 
in a Sunday-school. Then I should catch the class 
which now visits that poor place the Jardin de Paris, 
net the fools who go to the Moulin Rouge because 
they ought not to go, and send them back to their 
native land as happy as a “week-ender” who has 
seen the Louvre. 

Mrs. Middleton, I discovered, had come to Paris 
to write a book upon French social customs. She 
assured me that it was imperative upon her to visit 
the music-halls. “I want to see the people play,” 
she said. “I guess they work pretty well the same 
everywhere; but it’s the national games I’m set 
upon.” When I pointed out to her that the lady 
who displayed hose to her fellow-countrymen at the 


The Show Girl 


53 


Jardin de Paris was a Spaniard, and not a French- 
woman, she insisted immediately on going to verify 
the fact. It was two in the morning before I got 
rid of her, and then I had to tell her that if she were 
shut out of her hotel the police would want to know 
the reason why. 

So you see, Paddy, I neither dined nor supped 
with the charming Lea; and, once more having 
escaped those fascinating toils, returned at length to 
a welcome bed. When I awoke on the following 
morning the valet at the hotel informed me that 
Captain Berton, of the Engineers, desired particu- 
larly to see me, and upon the fellow being shown 
up, I learned in ten words that he had come to ar- 
range this pleasantry with d’Alengon. 

Perhaps, had I been clothed and in my right 
mind I should have answered him as he deserved, 
offered to punch the Captain’s head, and told his 
ambassador not to make a fool of himself. This, 
unfortunately, did not happen. Berton caught me 
when I was both tired and irritable, and I sent him 
headlong to Honore de Villefort, that old rascal of 
a Chevalier who will never cease to remind me of 
his obligation. What is even worse, Paddy, I named 
pistols — and that is just the maddest thing your 
friend Henry Gastonard has done since he was born. 

I am a fool — I know it. Often as I have desired 


54 


The Show Girl 


to play in one of those gigantic farces they call an 
“affair of honour in Paris/’ never did I contemplate 
standing up to a man with a pistol in my hand. Of 
course, I had no real cause of quarrel with Bernard 
d’Alengon, nor he with me. He is madly jealous of 
the charming Lea, and hates me like poison; if he 
can shoot me to-morrrow morning, he will do so. 

But, Paddy, I shall, in very truth, have finished 
my French education when this is over, and be pre- 
pared to return to England and a sober life. It is 
true that there might be an accident — you may say 
the same every time you call a hansom cab — but, 
Paddy, if the fun should be spoiled and this man hit 
me, then I call upon you, as the oldest friend I have, 
to do what you can for my little friend of the Butte, 
and to remember that there is no one else in all 
Christendom who would give her sixpence if not — 
Your friend, 


Harry. 


CHAPTEK VI. 


[Being a telegram from Paddy O’Connell to his 
friend, Henry Gastonard.] 

Yon must be mad. Have wired the Embassy. 
Am coming over. — Paddy. 


55 


CHAPTER VII. 


[A letter from the Rev. Arthur Warrington of Bel- 
don, Suffolk, to Mrs. Arthur Warrington at Por- 
chester Terrace, Bayswater.] 

My Dear Martha, — I will not say thank God; 
but, are we responsible for this unhappy young man’s 
folly? Should it have pleased the Almighty to call 
him I will see Sands and Collier about the estate at 
Ingershall immediately. Please let me have tele- 
grams as the evening papers come in. To think that 
this should be the end of Henry Gastonard’s fortune, 
his son a debauche in Paris, shot down in a vulgar 
duel about a married woman, and, I doubt not, 
precious gold lavished upon her. But we, dear wife, 
shall know how to spend that fortune to God’s good 
ends. 

I shall, of course, buy a motor-car at once should 
the worst follow. — Your devoted husband, 

Arthur. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


[In which Paddy O’Connell of Glendalough, writes 
to his sister Clara a full account of the duel be- 
tween Henry Gastonard and the Captain Bernard 
d’Alengon.] 

Hotel St. Paul, Paris, 

June 7th, 1905. 

Dear Clara, — You will have learned from the 
newspapers some of the news I have to tell you, but 
this will not make you less anxious to hear it a second 
time from a family pen. 

I arrived in Paris early on the Saturday morn- 
ing, and drove to the Hotel St. Paul; for, where else 
would I be driving at all on such a day? The news- 
papers gave me a fine account of poor Henry as we 
went along, and small hope had I of cheering him 
alive or talking to anything better than a corpse. 
When I arrived at his hotel, they would have shut 
the door in my face but for a way I have with them, 
and for sure the journalists are here all day and 
would tear the very bandages from Harry’s body to 
photograph the wounds. 


57 


58 


The Show Girl 

Well, I made my way up to the sick man’s room 
at last, and there found the poor fellow stretched 
upon his bed and looking by no means so cheerful as 
I should have wished to see him. By his side there 
was a little French girl, the one whom he wrote 
about last week, and a more beautiful creature the 
Lord never created. 

This, I confess, was some surprise to me. I 
am very well acquainted with the ladies of Paris, 
and had made a picture of this particular lady 
for myself. Clara, I was as far from the truth as 
Dublin from Cork. This is a face that the man 
Greuze should have painted. And oh, the airs and 
graces of her, the little winning ways, and the dig- 
nity! He tells me that she came from the circus; 
but if he were not on his back I’d call him a liar. 
Mimi the Simpleton for sure — why, she has the sense 
of twenty in her head, and ? tis your own Paddy who 
grows red in the face every time he argues with her. 

Well, the child sprang up upon my entrance, 
and stood there glaring at me like a wild cat out of 
the shows. What French I remember leads me to 
the belief that her observations were neither flatter- 
ing to my appearance nor my manner — but, God 
forgive me, I may have mistranslated it. As for 
Harry, he just stirred in his sleep and told me to go 


The Show Girl 59 

away, which so tickled me that I laughed like a boy 
at the pantomime. 

“Go away!” says I, “Then ’tis yourself that 
must be putting me out, for no other man in Paris 
can do it.” 

“Why,” says he, “if it isn’t old Paddy.” 

“My boy,” cried I, “my friend — the only one 
that ever I shall love in all this world — oh, God 
forgive you, Harry, for this,” says I. 

“Paddy,” says he, “I thought you were a jour- 
nalist. They’ve been here all day, Paddy.” 

“Show me the man that will come here when I 
am by, and I will tell you where to bury him.” 

“The old Paddy, every bit of him. Spoiling for 
a fight, as ever he was.” 

“There is no more peaceable man in Paris,” says 
I; “but lucky that your- Captain has gone to the 
wilds ! I’d have shot him, Harry, though the Parlia- 
ment itself had been there to prevent me.” 

He laughed again at this, but I saw that he was 
in pain, or, to be honest, the little Greuze girl did 
that same for me, and spoke words of which I was 
content to be hearing poorly. ’Tis plain she worships 
the ground he treads upon, though there is not much 
of that same just now — while as for the boy himself, 
if there’s any woman in Europe he cares a button 


60 


The Show Girl 


about, ask Paddy O’Connell to drink cold water, and 
see that he gets it. 

“Why do you come here? Why do you make 
this noise ?” she asked me — oh, the impudence of it ! 
— with her pretty eyes blazing like coals and her 
cheeks so crimson that a Bishop might have kissed 
them. “Are you his friend to do this? Oh, be 
ashamed of yourself,” says she, “and go away im- 
mediately.” 

’Twas a just rebuke, Clara, and Paddy not the 
man to be minding it. Presently, when I had done 
penance before her, she permitted me to sit in a 
chair at the bedside; and, every time I opened my 
mouth to speak, she looked so tremendous that I 
gulped down my words and ate them for very shame. 
By and by the doctor came in and asked Harry if I 
had been talking, and “never a word” says I, which 
was the truth to be sure. 

I should tell you that Harry was shot on the col- 
lar-bone, and devil a shirt will he be putting on for 
a long while to come. ’Tis precious hard luck, for 
he was leaving for England next week to get his liv- 
ing as the Will wants him to do. What’s to come of 
it all now, God only knows. If he’s not making 
five hundred a year by his own exertions this time 
next year, he’ll lose his fortune, and that weedy old 
hack of a curate in Suffolk come in for the whole 


The Show Girl 


61 


of it but a paltry hundred pounds a year. This must 
be talked over between us hereafter. To-day, when 
the doctor was gone, and the little witch with the 
pretty face sent out to do some shopping for him, he 
told me the story of the fight, and sorry I am that 
Paddy O’Connell missed that entertainment. For it 
was a fine affair entirely. 

“Why did you go out with the man?” I asked 
him. 

He answered me as shortly: 

“Curiosity, Paddy.” 

“The cause of half the mischief in the world. 
Was the woman sorry about it?” 

“The beautiful Lea? Oh, my dear Paddy, she 
went to church to pray that I might shoot him.” 

“There was nothing between you — your solemn 
word, Harry?” 

“Paddy, am I the man ” 

“Pd like to meet the one who’d tell me that you 
were.” 

“I have done everything that men do in Paris — 
why should I have missed this, Paddy?” 

“Ye w r ere not the man to miss it. Show me the 
one who says so, and I’m ready for him.” 

“I wanted to understand why people laugh at 
what they call an affair of honour. They all do laugh 
in England, and yet there are worse ways of putting 


62 


The Show Girl 


a bit upon men’s tongues. When I chose pistols I 
hardly knew what I was doing. But I said it and 
had to stick to it, Paddy.” 

“Of course, ye did. Ye weren’t afraid of him, 
Harry.” 

“Hot as you would understand it — upon my word, 
no. But a man who has been up all night in a reek- 
ing cafe, and then sees the sun rise over Belleville 
and remembers an appointment for six o’clock in a 
garden near Auteuil, that man would be a liar to 
say he liked it. There was one mortal hour, Paddy, 
when I would have given half my fortune to know 
what was going to happen. I remember thinking 
that most Englishmen would have pooh-poohed the 
whole affair and fallen back upon the national cant 
about scruples. Blame old Yillefort, who dosed me 
with half the filth they keep at the Taverne Royale 
— and that old beggar, Oleander, who drank 
enough brandy to poison a regiment on the score 
of it. 

“We came down from the Butte singing 
‘Brunette aux Yeux Doux’ with all our lungs. I 
sha’n’t tell you a lie and say that I thought Paris 
looked beautiful, or anything of the kind, for it just 
isn’t, Paddy. Everything seemed as cold as a 
November fog. The sun shone sardonically — I re- 
member seeing maids about the doors of the houses, 


The Show Girl 


63 


and envying them their occupation. A cabby who 
chaffed us was little better than an irritating black- 
guard, who should have been whipped. 

“When we arrived at Count Louvier’s house — 
you know we fought in his garden — I remember 
hearing the bell ring about five hundred times before 
they let us in. If anyone had spoken, if someone 
had made a joke, I would have been grateful to him 
then, Paddy — but we just entered the hall of the 
house in silence, walked straight through to the 
garden, went on down toward the river, and took up 
our positions on the borders of a little thicket of fir, 
without as much as a monosyllable from any one of 
them. I didn’t like that — you wouldn’t have liked it 
yourself, Paddy.” 

“Ye should have whistled an air,” said I, “laughed 
and joked yourself. That puts the iron into them. 
I remember that I was whistling ‘Finnigan’s Wake’ 
when I knocked down Peter Morley, that had me 
up at the police-court afterwards. Ye should have 
whistled, Harry!” 

He smiled at the idea of it, and for some while 
he would not talk again. When he had rested him- 
self and taken a drink of the stuff the doctor man 
gave him — God send me good whisky in such a 
plight! — he told me the rest of it. 

“They put a pistol into my hand, Paddy, and it 


64 


The Show Girl 


felt just like an iron bar. When I saw d’Alengon I 
wasn’t angry with him, but the devil on two sticks 
could not have cut an uglier figure than he did. The 
man was shooting fire already from his eyes — he 
couldn’t stand still a minute, was here and there and 
everywhere, but always turning back to look at me, 
as though he would tear my heart out ” 

“Ye weren’t behind in that, Harry?” asks I. 
“Ye didn’t wish him the top of the morning, or any- 
thing of that kind?” 

“Ho, Paddy — but I was sorry to see him so 
angry. I had done him no injury — what he has 
suffered — for I know Lea’s story — is in a measure, 
his own fault. Perhaps I had been wiser never to 
see her at all — I used to swear I would cut it every 
time I left her. If Paris were not the smallest city 
in the world when you want to avoid anybody, I 
would have kept my word. But I think she used to 
wait for me — hide where she knew I would come, 
and make a fool of herself all the time. That’s why 
the Captain looked like a human devil when he 
stood opposite to me that morning. If he hadn’t 
hit me with his bullet, I believe he would have 
used the butt.” 

“Ay, and a man’s game, too, Harry. ’Tis one 
I would have had a hand in myself — but you 
shouldn’t have missed him, boy — you used to be 


The Show Girl 65 

handy with a pistol, and you shouldn’t have missed 
him.” 

He sighed a bit at this, and I saw that I had 
wounded his vanity. Presently he said: — 

“I could have shot him dead, Paddy, if I had 
wished — but, you see, I had Lea in my mind all the 
while, and I couldn’t be angry about it. It is diffi- 
cult to make you understand it, but when the Cheva- 
lier placed us on the ground and put the pistol into 
my hand, I was half afraid to look at my man at all, 
his eyes were so queer. I could think of nothing 
else, Paddy. I didn’t remember that he might hit 
me; I forgot the man altogether; the 1 fight was be- 
tween me and the ugliest pair of eyes I have ever 
seen. When the word came to fire, I turned very 
slowly and raised my pistol with a child’s arm — I 
couldn’t look the Captain in the face, Paddy.” 

“And ye didn’t try to hit him at all, Harry? 
Will ye tell me that ye let the blackguard go 
empty ?” 

“I fired when the Chevalier spoke, but I took no 
aim, Paddy. The Captain hung back and looked at 
me for some minutes before he shot me. I remem- 
ber that there is a little wall running at an angle 
behind the corner of the wood, and over this I could 
see the river and a barge. A woman was steering 
a great lumber boat, and crying out something to a 


66 


The Show Girl 


man on the towing path — and I kept asking myself 
when she would disappear from my sight ; if it would 
he instantly in a sudden darkness; or slowly, as a 
picture fades from a sheet. When the crash came 
it was just as though a man had hit me with a ham- 
mer and then put a branding iron upon my shoulder. 
I forgot all about d’Alengon’s trouble then, and if 
I had held another pistol in my hand I would have 
shot him, rule or no rule. That’s the truth, Paddy; 
the pain maddened me — I could have crushed his 
head in my hands, stamped him under foot — I no 
longer cared — I was sorry that there had been no 
reason for his challenge.” 

“Shame on you for that. Please God, Pll shoot 
him before the week is out.” 

“No, no, Paddy — I absolutely forbid you to do 
anything at all.” 

“I tell ye I’ll shoot him — right or wrong, I’ll 
have a bang at him.” 

He laughed — just the same boyish Harry Gas- 
tonard that won my love twelve years ago at 
Charterhouse. 

“He’ll choose swords if you challenge him, 
Paddy.” 

“Then let him choose ’em and be hanged to him.” 

He was about to reply when the little witch that 
Greuze should have painted came into the room 


The Show Girl 


67 


again — and God forgive me, I told her that he had 
not opened his lips since she went out. It was now 
almost time for him to have his food — so I went up 
to my own room to write this letter. 

Be easy, Clara. The Captain is not in Paris, 
and there’ll be no fighting — unless he should return 
— but of that you shall be the first to have the news. 

Would my sister have me stand by when my 
oldest friend is on his back and the whole French 
nation dancing for joy of it? 

I’ll do no such thing — shame upon any O’Connell 
who would. So God bless you, Clara — and more 
will I write when next I have a letter for you. — 
Your affectionate brother, 


Paddy. 


CHAPTER IX. 


[Being a further instalment of the Story from the 
pen of Paddy O’Connell.] 

Hotel St. Paul, Paris, 

June 30th, 1905. 

Dear Clara, — I address this to you from the 
Hotel St. Paul, but I would have you to know that 
I am these two days at Poissy, which is a riverside 
hamlet at the gates of Paris. Harry is here with 
me, looking all his old self, and the little witch of 
a Greuze girl. We fish all day and catch nothing, 
and at night we listen to the singing when there is 
any. But, oh, my dear Clara, ’tis the oddest folk 
in the world which comes to this place, and no peo- 
ple for the back drawing-room at all. But that is 
between you and me, and need not be told to our 
neighbours at Glendalough. 

Ye should know that the Seine winds about 
Paris, and is here a pretty river enough, with a bit 
of a feathery island and an inn, to which the Bohe- 
mians come when they are not playing at the theatres. 
Such a company they are ! The prettiest women of 
68 


The Show Girl 


69 


Paris, dressed in collars and straw hats (and not 
always so much as that upon them), and the drollest 
figures of men that I ever clapped eyes upon. They 
spend the mornings upon the river bank or in their 
barges, fishing for gudgeons which they do not 
catch ; but in the afternoons they go off to make love 
in the woods, and come back as brazen as the col- 
leens from a fair. In the evenings we have dinner 
and music; and pretty enough it is to sit out in the 
moonlight and listen to these merry nightingales 
when they are in the mood to amuse us. 

This is the outside of the platter, Clara,; but the 
inside is not so pleasing by a long way. For one 
thing, I have discovered that the little simpleton 
Mimi is head over ears in love with my friend 
Harry, and he is not far short of that with her. 
And if this was not the worst of it, what should 
happen but that he had a visit last night from the 
very last person in Paris who ought to be seen with 
him, and she none other than the Captain’s wife, 
Lea d’Alengon. 

Oh, ’tis a pretty business entirely, and enough 
to drive a sane man silly. I had believed that he 
was done with Madame Lea for good (as he ought 
to be, for her folly has got him into trouble enough). 
The weeks that have passed since the duel have 
hardly brought her name up betwixt us. I said that 


r 


70 The Show Girl 

she was back with her husband, who would learn to 
treat her better; when what should happen but that 
she turns up at dusk last night, in a fine automobile 
with a nigger man driving, and is closeted a full 
hour with Harry to my certain knowledge. To say’ 
that I was angry is but to express my feelings poorly. 
You will be my judge in that. 

It would have been about eight when Lea came. 
Harry had gone up from the boat to the hotel, and 
I was helping Mimi to carry up the tea things, for 
we had been for a bit of a picnic, and a merry one, 
forsooth. I saw the automobile and a veiled woman 
getting out of it; but the child was the first to recog- 
nise Lea, and she had no pleasure of the meeting, 
you may be sure. ! 

“That is Madame d’Alengon,” says she, as pale 
as a little ghost when she said it. 

“Madame who?” asked I, not wishing to believe 
it. ; 

“Madame Lea,” cried she. “How could it be 
anyone else?” , 

“Oh, come,” says I, “there’s more than one 
Madame whom he knows in Paris.” 

She stamped her foot, just like a wild beast 
scenting its prey. 

“You know it is Madame d’Alengon, Mr. Paddy. 
Why do you not prevent it?” 


The Show Girl 


71 


“What! Shall I bundle her into the car and 
send her back to Paris? Pretty talk if I did that, 
my dear.” 

“She has come here to beg money of him, Mr. 
Paddy. Yon know she would not come for any- 
thing else.” 

“What!” cried I. “Don’t you think she is in 
love with him?” 

She laughed at this, long and drolly, the laugh 
of a woman who is shaken by a passion she cannot 
express otherwise. 

“Love — love — oh, what is all this talk of love? 
Go to her and offer money, and then, come back and 
speak to me of love.” 

“My dear,” says I, “ ’tis plain you will never be 
the friend of Madame Lea, in spite of what she’s 
done for you.” 

“Done for me, Mr. Paddy! Oh, yes, yes, 
yes — she tried to prevent me seeing Monsieur 
Henry again. I remember that, and the English 
pension where I was to be locked up and treated 
like a school-girl, that she might be with him — her 
lover — while I was away.” 

“Her lover! I’ll not have Harry called that.” 

“It is true, true,” she said, “and I — I am nothing 
when she is here. Why did he call himself my 
friend at all? Why did he take me from the Fete? 


72 


The Show Girl 

I was happy then — -yes, happy, Mr. Paddy. Why 
did he not leave me where I was?” 

She turned away from me and sobbed just for 
all the world like a grown woman who has come 
upon the supreme sorrow of her life. To be sure, 
Clara, I was much taken aback, and hardly knew 
what to say to her. Never until this moment had I 
understood how deeply she loved my friend, Henry 
Gastonard; but here was all her love written down 
in glittering tears which a child would have under- 
stood. No longer did I doubt the story of her virtue 
in a society where virtue is never much more than 
a jest. All that had happened up at the Butte and 
afterwards at the Hotel St. Paul became as clear as 
the day. Mimi the Simpleton was ready to die for 
the devil-may-care English boy. I had guessed it 
before, but to-day I was sure of it. 

“Oh, come,” says I, “ ? tis hearts that are soon 
mended when two have the will to do it — and, see 
here,” says I, “will ye be leaving him to the black 
woman who will ruin him, or take a hand in that 
affair yourself? Come up with me to the house now 
and hear what the lady has to say. Pll engage that 
neither of us will be behindhand in the civilities — 
and, Mimi,” says I “ ’tis your duty to go up.” 

Well, she would not hear me, but went off in a 
tantrum down again toward the river and the boat. 


73 


The Show Girl 

When I entered the house I discovered Harry to be 
closeted with Madame Lea in the little sitting-room 
upon the first floor, and far from pleased she was to 
see me, as you will imagine. A very beautiful, stately 
woman, as dark as the shadows upon a crimson rose 
and as full of passion as a caged Spaniard. I ob- 
served immediately that she had been telling the old 
story to my friend Harry, and with no mean success ; 
for he paced up and down like a wild beast thinking 
of the country, and seemed to welcome my intrusion 
as though a special providence had sent me to watch 
over him. 

“You know Madame Lea,” says he, with a wave 
of his hand toward her. 

“If I know her,” says I — and then, “I’ll take 
leave to ask a word after Captain d’Alengon and his 
health.” 

She laughed at this, saying something in French 
about “these droll Irishmen ;” but she did not inform 
me that the Captain was well, and, be sure, I was 
over-anxious about him. 

“Is he in Paris, Madame ?” I asked her. 
“’Twould be good news that he was in Paris.” 

“Monsieur d’Alengon is at Chalons,” says she, 
blazing up suddenly; “he has been transferred there 
at his own request.” 


74 


The Show Girl 


“Then 'tis to Chalons that you'll be going pres- 
ently, Madame?" says I. 

She did not reply to this, while Harry looked 
as foolish as a man can look when a woman has put 
a question to him and he has no mind to answer it. 
For my part, I was never more at my ease, and I sat 
there watching the fair-haired lad and the grown 
woman, and thinking that hut for my presence in 
that same hotel, she would carry him to Paris with 
her for pity's sake. 

“Are you fond of the fishing at Poissy, Ma- 
dame ?" I went on. “ 'Tis little that they seem to 
catch here and a long while in the catching of it. I 
have taken one gudgeon this day, and my friend two 
more — hut you will not have come here for the fish 
ing, perhaps ?" — I put it to her. 

She answered me with a commonplace. Harry 
appeared to he greatly troubled while I spoke, and 
presently he could stand it no longer. 

“Madame d'Alenqon is in trouble," he said, “I 
am sure you do not understand that, Paddy." 

“In trouble ?" says I, “then that's the worst news 
I've heard this day. Would it he about the Captain's 
going to Chalons ?" 

“Captain d'Alengon has behaved like a black- 
guard, Paddy." 


The Show Girl 75 

“I won’t doubt it. Let me meet him soon that 
I may tell him so.” 

“He has gone to Chalons and left this poor lady 
almost penniless.” 

“Then let her follow him immediately and see 
that someone else hears of it.” 

“She cannot follow him, Paddy. You are talk- 
ing nonsense. We must put ourselves in her position 
and try to help her. I’m sure that there is not a man 
in Paris, who would be readier to do so than my 
friend Paddy O’Connell.” 

I answered this at once — 

“If it’s to me that she’s come for advice, why 
here I am as ready with it as the best of them. For 
all that, her coming was an imprudence, Harry, and 
she’ll allow me to say that she’d have done better to 
have stayed away.” 

I said this in English, for I thought that she had 
no knowledge of a Christian’s tongue — but here I 
must have been mistaken, for she blazed up imme- 
diately, and said aloud that I had insulted her. 

“Who is this man?” she asked him. “Why do 
you permit him to say these things? Is he your 
friend ? Ho; a friend would not insult your friends. 
I wish to speak to you alone, Harry — have I not the 
right to ask that?” 

“Certainly you have, Lea — Paddy does not mean 


76 


The Show Girl 


what he says. He will understand everything better 
when I tell him about it afterwards. Come, Paddy 
(this to me), now do be reasonable for once, and put 
your philosophy in your pocket. I am sure you are 
very sorry for Madame d’Alengon.” 

“So sorry,” says I, “that if I could meet the Cap- 
tain this night, Fd put him in the river to show the 
good opinion I have of him.” 

They laughed together at this, and then, to change 
a subject which was not by way of being too delicate, 
Harry spoke of dinner, and the lady was quick enough 
to say “yes.” Ho one in this country does much 
without eating or drinking before and after they do 
it; and a better ornament for a dinner-table than 
Lea d’Alengon you would not be finding anywhere. 
She is a stately, vivacious lady, living chiefly for 
the glory of showing herself to the gentlemen of 
Paris, and of making love to such of them as capti- 
vate her fancy. Here, at this little inn at Poissy, 
she cut a fine figure enough, and sat down to the table 
as though she were a queen of a mountain kingdom 
come down from the heights to dine with pigmies 
below. We sat and listened to her talk as humble 
ministers to an acknowledged wit ; all of us, that is, 
but little Mimi the Simpleton, and she was silent 
enough but for one or two words of repartee that by 
no means discredited her. 


The Show Girl 


77 


’Twas as good as the leaping at the Horse Show, 
Clara, to watch the woman and the child upon oppo- 
site sides of that table, and to see the love that went 
flying between them. First, it would be Madame 
Lea talking to Harry with the grand air of the 
woman who finds herself in the nursery; then my 
little Mimi making such a grimace behind the lady’s 
hack that I must hold to the table with both hands 
to prevent the explosion that was within me. When 
Lea asks her quite affably what she came to Poissy 
to catch, Mimi answers as readily, “I came to catch 
myself” — and when Madame went on to say “That 
is a new kind of amusement” — says Mimi, “You 
are not too old to learn it.” Hone the less, I knew 
the child was all on fire because Harry talked so 
much to the other one, and I was not a bit surprised 
when she ran away to her own room directly dinner 
was done, and refused to come near us for the rest 
of the evening. 

This would have been about nine o’clock; Ma- 
dame left us at a quarter to eleven when Harry had 
told her for the twentieth time that he was not return- 
ing to Paris, and that she must go back alone. I saw 
that his refusal caused her much chagrin, but I will 
do him the credit to say that it was just what I had 
expected of him. When she was gone, and we sat to- 
gether for a last pipe before turning in, he asked me 


78 


The Show Girl 


frankly what were his responsibilities toward this 
woman, and what he ought to do for her. 

“The man has left her, you see,” says he; “he 
has made my friendship for her the excuse, and gone 
off with himself to Chalons. None hut a jealous 
Frenchman would have planned quite such a devilish 
revenge as that. He doesn’t divorce her, doesn’t talk 
of a separation; hut he leaves her in Paris without 
a sixpence, and then practises the moralities. Con- 
fess, my dear Paddy, that there is something particu- 
larly French and subtle in all this. Lea has been 
accustomed to all the luxuries. She is a woman who 
cannot live without them. Poverty to her is some- 
thing beyond the bounds of imagination — a shadow- 
land too woeful to contemplate. And now d’Alengon 
thrusts poverty on her. He leaves her in a house of 
glass, whence she can see the pleasures to which she 
is accustomed, but is forbidden to take part in them. 
Two or three chosen servants are there to spy upon 
her. What alternative has such a woman if it be not 
an alternative of dishonour?” 

“Ye speak truly,” says I, “and yet, if I were 
asked to name the biggest fool in Paris to-night, 
’twould be this same Captain d’Alengon. The man 
cannot see further than the end of his nose, and that, 
I am sure, is no famous spectacle. Of course, he has 
no love for the woman left, and may be trying to 


The Show Girl 


79 


drive her to those devices which he suspects, hut 
cannot prove. Your own course is clear, Harry — 
you may help her if you can help her honourably. 
But you’ll not see her again, and you’ll deny yourself 
because you are a man of honour to begin with, and 
a lover in the second place.” 

“A lover, Paddy? What do you mean by that?” 

“Just as much as I say, and not a word more. 
You are in love with little Mimi upstairs — I’d cry 
shame upon you if you were not.” 

He was taken aback at this, and did not answer 
me for quite a long while. When he spoke, I knew 
that I had touched his heart-strings, and that he 
would deny it no more. 

“If it’s true, Paddy, what then?” he put it to me. 

“Why,” says I, “you’ll leave for London in three 
days’ time; get honourable employment, which will 
save your fortune, and then come back to Paris to 
marry her — she, meanwhile, having been at some 
good school to soften the manners of her.” 

“Do you think they want softening, Paddy?” 

“I’m sure of it. Put all this talk of play-actresses 
and opera singers out of your head and come down 
to the truth. Mimi will make you a good wife .... 
but you’ll have to teach her how.” 

“She’d never stop at any school, Paddy.” 


80 


The Show Girl 


“Try her and see; and, directly it’s done, go 
back to London and work for your living.” 

“Ah,” says he, rising abruptly, “it’s a fine old 
philosopher come out of Ireland after all. Well, my 
boy, I’ll ask Mimi in the morning, and hear what she 
has to say about it.” 

“And you’ll not see the other woman again?” 

“Hot of my own volition, Paddy . . . upon 

my honour, no.” 

“Ah,” says I, “and a fine old friend is that same 
volition when ye begin to weigh it up and a pretty 
woman’s in the balance. But I’ll take what I can 
get,” says I, “and be thankful it’s no less.” 

Upon which, Clara, we parted; but how the 
promise is to be carried out, or what the future 
of such a man may be, God only knows. How, at 
the very minute of closing this letter, I learn that 
Mimi La Godiche has left the hotel early this morn- 
ing, and is nowhere to be found. Such a thing was 
not wholly unexpected by me; but what it may mean 
to my friend Harry Gastonard, I prefer not to think. 

Hever was a man in such a state of misery and 
despair. I can do nothing for him, say nothing, 
think of nothing. The child has gone, and there’s 
an end of it. But God keep her wherever she may 
be is the prayer of, your affectionate brother, 

Paddy. 


CHAPTER X. 


[Henry Gastonard writes to Paddy O’Connell a let- 
ter concerning his search for Mimi the Simple- 
ton.] 

Hotel St. Paul, Paris. 

July 15th, 1905. 

Dear Paddy, — The calamity of your sudden de- 
parture from Paris is in no way mitigated by the sad 
news I have to tell you. Mimi is not found, nor 
have I any clue to her whereabouts other than a piti- 
ful little letter from her, posted three days ago at 
Rainey, a suburb of Paris, and evidently a sincere 
expression of her determination not to return to me. 

That Lea d’Alengon is at the bottom of it all I 
have not the smallest doubt. But there are subsidi- 
ary reasons, and one of them your own frankness 
before Mimi concerning my fortune and my future. 
The idea has come to her that I am lost if I remain 
in Paris. She is madly jealous of the other woman, 
and would have me leave France that I may also be 
quit of the fascinating Lea. Such is the truth, 
Paddy; such is the naive confession of one whom 
81 


82 


The Show Girl 


few would credit with so sure an instinct or so faith- 
ful an affection. 

Meanwhile, as I need not tell you, who stood by 
me during the dark of the day, that my efforts to find 
her and to bring her back are unceasing, and pur- 
sued with all the advantage my fortune can bestow. 
Recently I revisited the old haunts at ISTeuilly, 
which we re-discovered together before your sister’s 
unfortunate illness recalled you from Paris. The 
quest of the lion-tamer, this horrible monster of a 
Cassadore, was rewarded with success some days ago, 
when I found him in a booth at Conflans, and was 
immediately admitted to his august presence. But 
he knows nothing of Mimi, nor is it reasonable to 
suppose that even her resolution would carry her 
again to scenes so reminiscent of the phantoms of 
her childhood. 

I say that he knows nothing of Mimi, but this is 
not to believe that he would not hear of her gladly, 
and press her joyfully to his grimy bosom if any 
opportunity occurred. A truly heroic figure, vast 
and proud and formidable, I found him in a 
wooden shed behind a crazy circus, taking a plat du 
jour of black bread and ancient beef, and making 
frequent applications to a green bottle which con- 
tained an unknown but, I doubt not, potent liquor. 
Upon either side were lions, which so delight the 


The Show Girl 


83 


simple people of the fetes and fairs about Paris. 
They were shut off from the passage in which he sat 
by huge beams of timber; but these stood so wide 
apart that a paw could pass at half a dozen places — 
and you, Paddy, will understand how much I en- 
joyed that interview. For there were lions at the 
front of me and lions at the back of me, and, al- 
though some of them seemed half asleep, there were 
others very wide awake indeed, and so playful that I 
wonder I came away with any flesh upon my bones 
at all. 

We spoke between the roaring — no pleasant 
sound at any time, and doubly fearful when you 
have a lion within a foot of you. I found Cassadore 
quite frank, both about Mimi and his business. The 
lions, he admitted, were half -drugged when he put 
them through their paces. It was true that the great 
African brute Salambo had eaten his keeper, “Sam- 
my,” when he, Cassadore, was away in Paris; but, 
after all, you cannot make Christians of lions by 
burning them with red-hot irons, nor was the 
“Sammy” aforesaid quite sober when he entered the 
cage. In a voice resounding with dramatic tones, the 
man described how he had returned to find his serv- 
ant eaten to the very neck — “mais, monsieur, the 
eyes were wide open and staring, and the head was 
untouched.” 


84 


The Show Girl 


Of Mimi the fellow told me much. He had 
bought her of an old woman at Orleans. There was 
no other word for it. He saw the child capering be- 
fore a dirty home, and was struck by the readiness 
and the wit with which she answered his questions. 
Assuming her to be a waif and stray entrusted by 
callous parents to a mercenary hag, he made a bar- 
gain on the spot, and took Mimi away with him. His 
further assurance that he loved her as his own daugh- 
ter, uttered between lengthy draughts from a capa- 
cious bottle, carried less conviction than his story. 
He had, so he said, spent large sums upon her educa- 
tion, and taught her himself those charming ac- 
complishments which she displayed at the many 
fetes her presence graced. Having in turn sold her 
to me (for it came to that), he asked if I thought he 
had no sense of honour, no finer feeling than to play 
the part of a mean kidnapper, taking young women 
from respectable homes? This I answered immedi- 
ately in the negative — for who would contradict a 
showman with half a dozen lions at his back ! 

Admit, my dear Paddy, that this quest is not a 
little pitiful, when you remember the object of it. 
Consider what my acquaintances would say of me if 
they heard that my latest occupation is to search the 
booths about Paris for a child who was capering 
with a tambourine a few months ago, and may now 


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85 


be returned to that employment. With these I 
myself should not argue. There is a day in every 
man’s life when he must stand outside the world’s 
conventions, break with all common tradition, and 
write the page of action for himself. Such a day 
is mine — I am indifferent to all else but its issue. 

This spirit, my dear Paddy, is moving me to em- 
ploy every agency money can command for the re- 
covery of little Mimi. I have just engaged the ser- 
vices of Jules Farman, perhaps the cleverest officer 
in Paris to-day, and he is with me in this quest. Our 
latest call was upon the old woman Marie, who lives 
in a cottage upon the great high road between Blois 
and Orleans. Here we gleaned but little. The child 
is the natural daughter of persons unknown. She 
was left with a sum of money, and a “mother’s care” 
— do not laugh, Paddy — was bestowed upon her. 
Farman assured me that this hag would not help us, 
but on the day following our return to Paris, he 
carried me suddenly to the suburb of Rainey and 
declared that he had a clue. Mimi was travelling 
with a rascally showman named Gondre. A hundred 
franc note would buy her freedom — that freedom I 
would have paid not a hundred but ten thousand 
francs to ensure. 

We left for Rainey early in the afternoon and 
visited the show as any bumpkins ready to gape at 


86 


The Show Girl 

aged Pantaloon, or to lay our offerings at the feet of 
a rouged and battered Columbine. 

The tents were pitched in a clearing of the wood 
near the village — half a dozen of them with sorry 
spavined hacks grazing round about, and as fine a 
collection of rascality in charge as all France could 
show you. I will not dwell upon the shame with 
which I discovered myself seeking the child in these 
haunts. I am not easily moved to excitements, 
Paddy, but when we approached this place and I 
told myself that little Mimi had left me for such a 
life as this, that I was about to re-discover her and 
take her to my house — be sure never to leave it 
again — then, believe me, I lived one of the truest 
hours of life that I have ever known. 

I say that we walked about the grounds as ordi- 
nary bumpkins, but, be sure, our eyes were seeking 
Mimi everywhere, and the first disappointments came 
when we discovered nothing whatever that would jus- 
tify Farman’s optimism. The man Gondre proved to 
be a veritable clown of the vulgarest kind — a fellow 
of small physique, mean eyes and jaded energies. 
He stood upon the platform of a booth supposed to 
contain an angry panther, who shared a dinner with 
a white-haired Circassian, and generally displayed 
tenderness towards her — but when we paid our 
money and went in, we discovered the panther to 


87 


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be nothing more than a German wolf-hound, while 
the white-haired Circassian was a lady from the 
neighbourhood of la Galette, who had resorted with 
some success to the potentialities of common washing 
soda. 

This did not surprise me, but I was disappointed 
to find that Farman was well known to these people, 
and that I had done better to have gone there alone. 
True, every door opened at his coming, but the 
suspicion remained that these vulgar wits were being 
played against his own, and that they understood 
perfectly well why he had come to Rainey. 

From this moment I, myself, despaired of finding 
Mimi at all. Useless for Farman to tell me that she 
was hidden somewhere in the neighbourhood of the 
fete and that he would not leave without her. I 
began to believe that our coming had been antici- 
pated and Mimi removed. It is true that a gleam of 
hope came to me after dinner, when my friend asked 
me to go with him to a cottage a little way from the 
town and did not hesitate to say that Mimi was 
there. The place proved to be a tumble-down shanty 
in the very heart of the wood, a mere cabin reeking 
of filthy odours and indescribably damp. Here we 
found the fellow Gondre, and with him a handsome 
girl, sleek and dark-eyed and of the gipsy blood. 
They received us civilly, and said that they believed 


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that the young woman was discovered and would be 
handed over to us. I perceived nothing in their de- 
meanour to awaken suspicion, and for the first time 
I really dared to believe that Mimi was found. 

Farman, upon his part, took the affair a little 
cautiously. I think that he feared something, both 
from the lonely situation of the house and the known 
reputation of those who owned it. 

When Farman and I were left alone in the room, 
no light but that of a coal fire in a broken grate, 
the doors closed, the silence of the wood all about us, 
I detected a certain uneasiness, a readiness to set 
his chair closer to mine and to feel for his revolver, 
which were some comment upon the gallant reputa- 
tion he bears in Paris. Unable to hold his tongue, 
he recited in low tones the story of the man Grondre, 
his known share in a recent story of crime, the 
assassinations, robberies and assaults of which the 
law had failed to convict him — and, as though this 
were not enough, he began to blame me for seeking 
Mimi at all. 

“She has been bred to this life,” he said, “and 
nothing will wean her from it. What can you hope 
— to make her your mistress? Believe me, she 
would not live with you a month. Much better to 
leave her to these people and return to London. If 
she goes with you to-night, she will leave you again. 


89 


The Show Girl 

I know her kind — there are ten thousand of them 
in Paris, and not an honest one among them. You 
are risking your money, perhaps your life, in this 
quest. Is the girl worth it, whatever her looks V’ 

It was difficult to answer this — for be sure the 
man had the logic of the argument. I could not 
enter upon the discussion of my reasons, most cer- 
tainly could not confess to him the whole truth, that 
I would sooner have parted with every shilling of 
my fortune than have returned to Paris without 
Mimi. 

Happily the argument terminated before it had 
begun — I am quoting from you, Paddy — by the 
sudden appearance in the room of the man Gondre, 
the gipsy girl, and another young woman apparently 
of some twenty-five years of age. 

I have told you that there was little light to 
speak of in this mean hovel. A reddening fire, a 
guttering candle, showed me immediately that the 
newcomer was not Mistress Mimi, nor did she 
resemble her in any way. To be candid, the girl 
wore an odd and ungainly appearance, and I had 
scarcely blurted out an impatient exclamation when 
Farman laughed aloud and asked, not altogether to 
my astonishment, “Why did you bring that boy 
here?” Then I perceived the truth — the so-called 
girl was a young actor from a neighbouring booth, 


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The Show Girl 

and he still wore the clothes in which he had 
delighted the bumpkins of the country side. 

“Why do you bring that boy here ?” 

“Mais, monsieur, you are insulting us.” 

“Do you wish me to remember your history, 
Maitre Gondre? Now, come, no nonsense. Produce 
the child, and we will make it worth your while.” 

The question was direct and demanded an 
answer. I realised now the dangers of our situation. 
These people understood that we had money upon 
us to ransom Mimi if she could be found. They 
were determined that we should not leave the cabin 
with that money upon us if any wit of theirs, or 
violence, could extort it from us. To this end the 
young actor had been called from a neighbouring 
booth. I had no doubt that others were being sum- 
moned from other booths, and that our position must 
soon become desperate. Meanwhile, the fellow 
Gondre was protesting by the honour of all his 
ancestors that we had insulted him, doing what he 
could to detain us and showing his hand most 
impudently. 

“If this young woman is not the person you 
seek, I am sorry,” he rejoined. “It is not my fault, 
monsieur. Admit that I have been ready to oblige 
you. I am sure the young gentleman will wish to 
recompense me for my trouble. Is it not so, mon- 


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The Show Girl 

sieur — you will be ready to pay us for what we have 
done and for any further information we can bring 
you? Let that be understood, and I will undertake 
to find the girl within a week. But naturally we 
are too poor to work for nothing.” 

I was about to make an answer to this when 
Farman stood up and replied for me. I could see 
that the situation alarmed him, and that he was 
employing all his wits to extricate us from it. Agree: 
ing apparently with the man Gondre’s contention, 
he said that he would speak to me apart and then 
make them an offer. This, I think, deceived the 
company for an instant, and before they had time to 
debate it, we were standing outside in the wood and 
the door behind us was closed. 

“Run!” he said — “run — or, by God, they will 
murder us!” 

I did not ask him a single question, did not even 
care to know why a man armed with such authority 
as he possessed should be in danger of his life in 
such a place as the woods by Rainey. It was very 
late by this time, and the thicket about us black, 
dark, and still. We took a path at hazard, and, 
forcing our way through the brushwood would have 
reached the town of Rainey itself and the railway 
station there, but we had not gone fifty paces before 
the men were on our track, many men, as it ap- 


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The Show Girl 

peared by their shouting, and quite open in their 
pursuit of us. I had a revolver with me, and I need 
not tell you that Farman had his, but it became 
clear to me that these would be of little service in 
such a place. When my companion pulled me from 
the path and dived into a thicket at the edge of a 
considerable copse, I would not have wagered a 
sovereign upon our chances, nor admitted any but 
the seemingly inevitable conclusion to so sorry an 
adventure. 

We lay in the thicket for a couple of hours, I sup- 
pose. If the ridiculous nature of the proceeding 
occurred to me, be sure I was not willing to admit it. 
A man does many foolish things in the name of 
woman, but is not often ready to write about them. 
And I do believe, Paddy, that we came as near to 
being knocked on the head for a few francs as any 
two men that ever set out upon a Quixotic errand 
and forgot to count the cost of it. 

More than once I perceived the slouching figure 
of the man Gondre, as he thrashed the undergrowth 
and exhorted his brother ruffians to diligence. The 
youth who had disguised himself as a girl came into 
the very place where we lay, and almost stepped 
upon Jules Farman. This was the finest moment of 
it all, for, had he discovered us, Farman would have 
shot him dead and the rest of the gang swarmed into 


The Show Girl 


93 


the copse in a moment. I think he was himself 
afraid of the darkness and not unwilling to escape it. 
When he had gone, a voice from afar called him to 
another covert, and we were left alone. 

I should tell you, Paddy, that all this happened 
at a distance, perhaps, of a couple of miles from the 
town. Had we run for it in the first instance, other 
showmen would have emerged from other booths and 
reinforced the gang, who would have murdered us 
first and robbed us afterwards as cheerfully as they 
would have gone to the tents to exploit the “white 
panther” from the Indies. For this reason, and no 
other, Jules Farman chose to go to ground, and I 
could not but admire his prudence. When the im- 
mediate danger appeared to be abated, he led me 
through the wood, not toward the town of Rainey 
itself, but to the main eastern railway line, and there, 
by a stroke of good fortune, we found a “marchan- 
dise” or goods train waiting at a signal cabin, and 
instantly boarded it and were taken to Paris. It was 
five in the morning when I made the Gare de l’Est — 
an hour later when I reached my rooms in the Rue 
St. Paul and flung myself upon my bed as weary and 
disappointed a man as any in Paris. 

For now it is clear to me that the quest of this 
child is vain, and that she has determined to separate 


94 


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her lot from mine, cost her or me what it may. 
Dear Paddy, yours as ever, 


Harry Gastoi^ard. 


CHAPTER XI. 


[Henry Gastonard informs Paddy (TConnell of his 

probable return to London.] 

July 21st, 1905. 

Dear Paddy, — I have received your letter dated 
July 18th, but I cannot say that I have hastened to 
reply to it. This is very fit and proper, for who 
would dare to reply in haste to a document which 
contains so formidable an indictment. 

I am going to the devil, you say, and going, in 
motor parlance, upon my fourth speed. The writing 
is upon the wall, but I have no eyes to read it. A 
few brief months shall roll and then my inheritance 
pass to the amiable parson at Beldon, and I become 
a beggar upon the streets — or in the poorhouse, as 
the case may be. So be it, my dear Paddy — for 
what is written is written, nor shall all the tears blot 
out a single line. 

Consider the irony of it. I am to earn five hun- 
dred pounds a year by my own labours. The for- 
tune bequeathed to me by my dear father is not to 
help that undertaking. Useless for me to go into 
95 


96 


The Show Girl 


the city, to choose a Hebrew at hazard and to say to 
him, pay me five hundred per annum and I will lend 
you twenty thousand. The Will forbids the trick. 
The money must be earned by me, by my own labour 
and industry, or my cousin must have my fortune. 
Poor devil, he wants it badly. I have not the heart 
to begrudge him a single penny of it. 

But, Paddy, imagine your friend Henry Gaston- 
ard upon an office stool or seeking half commissions 
in the purlieus of Throgmorton-street ! Of talents I 
have none. I could not earn a shilling by writing 
for the newspapers, or persuade even an enthusiastic 
friend to set up a bust of mine in any hall or cellar 
in Europe. The world has been to me a pleasant 
place. I have drunk of the fountains of Bimini and 
quaffed draughts of perpetual youth. To dress and 
drive, to dine, to dance, to sing, to sleep — behold my 
curriculum! I can no more imagine life without its 
music, its laughter, its love than I can depict the 
Chatelet without its Zulema or the Athenee robbed 
of the art of Mademoiselle Yalone. If I have lived 
in Paris among the Bohemians, it is because they 
stand to me for the fullest impersonation of the joie 
de vivre. I may sink to poverty, pass into the 
shadows of obscurity — but to the degradation of the 
servile state, never, dear Paddy, upon my honour. 

So your letter leaves behind it but the gratitude 


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97 


of a man who bends to the truth but is obstinate to 
the fact. I am answering it by a confession — and 
one which will not be very welcome to you. Yester- 
day I saw our old friend Lea d’Alengon again and 
spent many hours in her company. She is to be 
divorced, I understand, and Paris amused by a pretty 
scandal. You know how little this concerns me. 
You will be very sure that my meeting with her was 
accidental and that I forbore to seek her out of my 
own volition — even as I promised you. 

Let me say that it began with a wild dinner 
given at Charine’s by that mad voluptuary, Willy 
Martin, the American. I accepted his invitation be- 
cause Paris has bored me very much since Mimi 
went away, and there are not enough decent people 
left in the whole city to keep a reasonable man from 
suicide. 

We dined in a room set out to represent a cabin 
in the mountains. There were back cloths of per- 
petual snow and cooling glaciers, distant views of 
mountain peaks and wonderful pictures of impossible 
valleys. The table was supposed to be a bank of the 
driven snow, above which a cascade suspended its 
frozen waters. For partners of the feast, there were 
handmaidens in dominoes — beautiful of course, be- 
cause Willy Martin declared them to be so. When 
I drew a paper from the basin and discovered that 


98 


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my particular lot was to be cast with a green domino 
of some magnificence, then I thought of St. Patrick 
and of you and declared myself in luck. Alas, 
Paddy, I had not been two minutes at the table 
when, despite her domino and a most excellent dis- 
guise, I discovered that I had the amorous Lea for a 
companion and that the drawing was entirely to her 
satisfaction. 

It is some weeks, as you know, since I have seen 
this adorable creature. To judge by her conversa- 
tion, she has been on the verge of a decline because 
of my neglect. Almost her first words destroyed that 
fond illusion of her poverty which helped her to win 
my sympathies when she visited me at Poissy. 

I no longer believe her story that d’Alengon left 
her without a shilling, although it would appear to 
be true that his patience is exhausted and that he is 
about to take a quite unusual step for a Frenchman, 
and to divorce her. This, if the tongue of gossip has 
not done her an injury (which is possible), he appeal's 
to have the right to do; and yet it is delightful to 
hear her protesting her innocence and declaring that 
all her fault is a love of the light and a positive aver- 
sion from social darkness. 

“I shall go and live in the East,” she said to me 
in a languorous outburst, when the dinner was still 
young. “I must have sunshine and music, Harry — 


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99 


all the sober things are hateful to me; I could never 
be an obedient wife to any man. Of course, I am 
sorry for my husband. It is the privilege of a woman 
to he sorry for the man she cannot love. He married 
me — I did not marry him. What child in a convent 
ever marries any man, or is to be held responsible 
for the womanhood which comes to her afterwards. 
Marriage to me was a release from routine and the 
lives of the Saints. I had learned to hate the Saints ; 
I would have kissed the feet of any man who closed 
that dreadful hook to me. And all the world was 
opening to my eyes, the great world, immense to the 
childish imagination as the heavens, and as full of 
golden stars. Do you wonder that I leaped for joy 
when they told me I was to he married.” 

I had never heard Lea serious before; but I do 
believe she was serious upon this occasion. My 
promise that if she went to the East she would hear 
little even of the “tom-tom” in a harem, and find the 
prophet’s limitations trying did not move her a hair’s- 
breadth. Had she not seen “The Belle of Teheran” 
as they staged it at the Bouffes, and did not that 
glittering spectacle of sequins and seraphs stand to 
her for the whole glory of the Asiatic world ? 

“You would be one of four, Lea,” I said to her, 
“an adorable quarter of a gloomy menage. It is true 
that you would be permitted to sleep upon cushions. 


100 


The Show Girl 


and to wash your hands in a fountain, but, my dear 
lady, consider the dernier cri in turbans, and reflect. 
There is no glamour of the East except in the West. 
Go to the Bouffes when the floats are dark, and see 
what the scenery looks like. Does it remind you of 
anything on earth which is not the apotheosis of the 
mean and the shabby. To me the East stands for a 
kind of opera comique, which is to be suffered only 
by those who view it from afar. I like to read of 
pashas and pagodas, of temple bells and little Bur- 
mese maidens; but when I am among them I think 
of the fleas. You, Lea, would be calling for sweet 
scents and a passage home before you had been in 
the place twenty-four hours. As for the aged Vizier 
who owned you, I doubt if he would have a whisker 
left in a week. My compassion would go out to him.” 

Well, Paddy, she refused to see it, and I per- 
ceived that for the moment some wild scheme of ro- 
mance is in her head, and may lead her to new ex- 
travagances sufficiently wild and sufficiently foolish 
to astonish this Paris which loves the bizarre and the 
daring. She is not without rich relatives, and, as 
she told me to-night, there is an uncle at Marseilles 
who is always ready to befriend her. Men are some- 
times very gentle toward a woman whose chief enemy 
is her own beauty. Lea will find defenders, whatever 
may be charged against her ; and it would not aston- 


The Show Girl 


101 


ish me in the least to hear that she had become a 
queen of the colony at Cairo or a novice among the 
Benedictine nuns at Subiacum. Nothing, indeed, 
would be too outrageous for the changing dispositions 
of a woman who has drunk of the cup of satiety, 
and already has found it bitter. 

Willy Martin’s dinner came to an end, I should 
tell you, in a blaze of glory, which nearly set the res- 
taurant on fire. A nymph, supposed to be imprisoned 
in the ice, but really shut up in a glass case, danced 
a wild pas seiil upon the table, and overturned the 
candlesticks into the lap of little Jane Merlot, from 
the Opera Comique. When her robe caught fire — 
and she could ill spare it — the soda water was em- 
ployed to extinguish the flames — a bright idea, and 
one which set this rollicking company to other no- 
tions not less brilliant. From this moment, a battle 
of the corks took the place of that polite talk so dear 
to our forefathers. 

I found myself at five o’clock of the morning upon 
the road to Versailles in a forty-horse car driven by 
Lecallo, of the Opera. Lea, in a green domino, 
soaked to the hems in aerated waters, was at my side, 
and heaven alone knew whither we were going! As 
for Lecallo, he drove like the devil possessed; and 
before I had quite realised the absurdity of the ven- 
ture, we stood at the door of the Hotel de France, 


102 


The Show Girl 


at Chartres, and a pretty crowd of early birds were 
cheering us to the echo. 

Such, my dear Paddy, was the first stage of an 
adventure as ludicrous as it was lamentable. I give 
you my word that I would have paid a hundred 
sovereigns at any moment of it to have been quit of 
the predicament and safely back in my own room at 
the Hotel St. Paul. This sum I would have doubled 
when Lecallo, with intentions of the loftiest kind, 
chose to drive his car on to Tours, and left me in the 
Hotel with one green domino and a crushed opera 
hat. How, for a truth, was my own position both 
perilous and impossible. It became infinitely worse 
when Lea, disdaining all other arts, threw herself 
upon her genius for romance and suggested an imme- 
diate journey to a desert island where none should 
discover us. 

“What has Paris done for us?” she asked me 
dramatically. 

I answered that it had just given us an excellent 
dinner and a nymph in a block of ice. 

“Be serious, my dear Harry,” she said; “did 
you not tell me last night that you never wished to 
see Paris again?” 

“Hot until the morning, Lea. At night I never 
wish to see Paris again until the morning.” 

“Ah, you jest when I am so much in earnest. 


The Show Girl 


103 


Take me away, Harry, take me from all temptation — 
to the sea, to the woods — anywhere, if I may forget 
what has been, and learn to hope.” 

“But, my dear Lea, does a pretty woman ever 
cease to hope ?” 

“She ceases to hope when the man who should be 
her friend ceases to remember. I have been telling 
myself for the last ten days that the luckiest day 
of my life was the one which determined my husband 
to divorce me. The supreme injustice demands the 
supreme sacrifice. I am now going to blot out ten 
years of my life and start again from my girlhood. 
I shall leave Paris, perhaps leave France. As I do 
not intend to deceive myself, there will he no part 
for religion in this reformation of a soul. I shall 
live as all the other good women about me. Impu- 
tation will he nothing to me, for I shall have nothing 
to win by reputation. Even my name will not be- 
tray me, for I shall he Madame d’Alengon no more. 
This is my settled resolution. I am waiting to hear 
how far you, the oldest of my friends, approve it.” 

This, my dear Paddy, was the astounding con- 
fession this romantic woman now poured into my 
amazed ears. Whether to take it seriously, or to 
believe it to he the natural sequel to a night of 
frivolity, I know no more than the dead. 

For the moment I appeared to be confronted by 


104 


The Show Girl 


a sudden purpose, and to become aware of an after- 
math to the harvests of folly. Lea, I said, had 
wearied at last of all that Paris had to give her. 
Love, light, laughter, music — these revolted her, and 
she would turn from them. It might be possible 
that the tongue of slander had wholly maligned her, 
and that at heart she was a virtuous woman, seeking 
something as yet lacking to her life. Upon this I 
felt able to pronounce no settled opinion. Has not 
old Georges Oleander written that the one riddle 
man may never solve is the riddle of a woman’s 
confidence ? 

“What do you want me to do, Lea?” I asked her 
baldly. “How can I help this wonderful scheme of 
yours? Do you suggest that I buy a desert island 
and a camping outfit for two? Or shall it be a cara- 
van and a month in the forests of Amboise? You 
have only to say the word.” 

Well, this pleased her immensely. She clapped 
her hands at the novelty of the idea, and I could see 
that the “reformation of the soul” had gone to the 
wall for the time being, at any rate. 

“I should like nothing so well,” she said. “A 
caravan in the forest — how absolutely delightful. 
Did not the Chevalier Leblanc have one last year? 
You remember — it was in all the papers. A motor 
caravan — a little bedroom, a salon, and a kitchen 


The Show Girl 


105 


behind it. My dear Harry, yon could not suggest 
anything I would like half so well. Let us go back 
to Paris immediately, that I may order my dresses.” 

“But, Lea, I don’t happen to own a caravan, and 
it would take some months to build one. Besides, 
I made no promise to go with you — certainly not 
alone.” 

She looked at me amazed. Here was a thing 
that Lea d’Alengon could not for a moment under- 
stand. 

“My dear Harry, what do you mean? Shall we 
take a sergent de ville with us, then?” 

“But, Lea, consider our reputations. I grant you 
that this appearance at Chartres is little to our credit, 
but, at the worst, we can blame the car. I don’t 
think your friends would accept a similar excuse in 
the case of a caravan. "We could not say that we 
burst a tyre and were detained for a whole month in 
the Forest of Amboise.” 

She was much piqued. Of course, she did not 
take my words literally, but they were understood in 
some way as an anticipation of all she had been lead- 
ing up to, and a ready repudiation of it. Her reply 
intimated this in plain terms, and also was very far 
from that flippant response I had expected. 

“Are my friends’ opinions anything to me, 
Harry? Will they be anything when I am a di- 


106 


The Show Girl 


vorced woman? Is it really of no concern to you 
whatever, what happens to me afterwards ? I do not 
believe it. Honour gives a woman claims which love 
may deny to her. Are you insensible to them ?” 

“You know that I am not, Lea. My friendship 
for you would do much, but it would not do it upon 
a false compulsion of honour. The story of your 
life is your own. It would be no kindness to make 
it mine, nor should I permit you to do so.” 

“You have never loved me, Harry.” 

“I have often said so, Lea.” 

“Then why do you not go away from me ?” 

“Perhaps I shall take you at your word — in a 
caravan.” 

She laughed a little angrily. I could see that 
she was greatly chagrined by our brief talk, but by 
no means ready to accept it as final. 

“Would you leave me without a friend in Paris, 
Harry — must I think that of you?” 

“You know me better than to think it, Lea.” 

“But you are telling me that you mean to go?” 

“I am answering you as you asked to be an- 
swered.” 

“And that is the man — always — always — when 
the flower is cut from the tree, it is already a dead 
flower to him.” 

“Hot always, Lea. I have known him to keep it 


The Show Girl 


107 


quite a long time — in a book. But, of course, the 
particular man was very young. Now, here is our 
breakfast coming. Is not that a subject more agree- 
able to you V* 

She shook her head, and would not admit the 
fact. The repast was the dullest I have ever shared 
with the stately Lea, and even the purchase of a 
respectable frock — the best that the city of Chartres 
could discover — did not allay her gloom. In truth, 
my dear Paddy, she has determined to marry me 
when her husband divorces her, and is dismayed to 
discover that I am not as determined to marry her. 
For my part, I know not what to think, and I am 
wondering if honour may not have something to say 
to me after all. Certain it is that her husband’s 
jealousy chose me before others for its subject, and 
chose me without a shred of justice or reason. They 
say in Paris that there would have been a reconcilia- 
tion but for that mad journey of hers to Poissy and 
the inn. You know how little I was responsible for 
that — you do not need to be reminded of its circum- 
stances. 

All that has happened to Lea d’Alengon has 
been of her own seeking. For this reason my mood 
impels me to decline to respond to her sentiment 
or to be deceived by it. Nor am I yet wholly con- 
vinced that it is real. When we returned to Paris 


108 


The Show Girl 


tonight, Lecallo having called for us unexpectedly at 
five o’clock of the afternoon, the first decent person 
we met, upon quitting the Bois de Boulogne, was the 
Count of Marcy, just returned from Dieppe, and 
upon his way to the Engadine. He greeted Lea rap- 
turously, and immediately spoke of a little dinner 
at the Bitz, and of another couple who were to dine 
there with him. She accepted the invitation in- 
stantly, and quitted me to go and dress. It is true 
that I promised to meet her to-morrow and to give 
her a “man’s opinion” upon the whole situation; but 
that promise will not be fulfilled. And it will not 
be fulfilled, Paddy, because Farman has just brought 
me the precious news that Mimi has been traced 
to England and is now engaged with a troupe of raga- 
muffins playing in the barns and booths of my own 
country. 

So I go to London immediately. The decision 
is irrevocable. And it may be that I have seen Lea 
d’Alengon for the last time. 

I will not say I wish it so, for I have called her 
my friend; but the event might be better in the end 
for her and for — Yours in great good hope, 

Harry Gastonard. 


CHAPTER XH. 


[Henry Gastonard tells of a visit to his cousin, the 

Rev. Arthur Warrington, at Lowestoft.] 

Hotel Metropole, Lowestoft, 
July 31st, 1905. 

Dear Paddy, — The late Douglas Jerrold re- 
marked that he doted upon the sea — from the beach. 
It seemed yesterday that the sea doted upon me 
when it rolled me like a barrel in my bunk and 
moved me to appeal to high heaven for immediate 
annihilation. The passage across was about as dirty 
as a Channel passage can be — and that, as you know, 
you who are fond of singing the glories of the deep 
(when you are on shore) is a shade which blackest 
night cannot surpass. 

I made no stay in London save to dine and to 
sleep at the Carlton. The hansom which drove me 
across Trafalgar Square showed me no amazing nov- 
elty, nor was I long enough in the city to find the 
place much changed. It is true that there is now a 
fine bit of life and colour where once the dingy old 
.Pavilion stood — for I visited the new building after 
109 


110 


The Show Girl 


dinner — and Leicester Square seems less shabby than 
formerly; but a man who comes over from Paris is 
rarely amazed by anything that London can show 
him, and admits her later day claims reluctantly. In 
one matter alone do I find a real advance, and that 
is the newer hotels, which, I venture to think, are 
just about as good as any in Europe. 

You did not answer my last letter — possibly be- 
cause of your indignation; it may be because of your 
want of interest. A man who is playing golf by the 
seashore (for I am convinced you are there) cares lit- 
tle for the fact that his neighbour is in a bunker, and 
less for the means by which he may extract himself 
therefrom. Nor do I expect the Paddy of old time 
to be changed very much from that Hector who has 
washed his hands of me upon more than one occa- 
sion, and is quite ready to do so again when my let- 
ters have made him angry enough. You think that 
I am playing a fool’s game, Paddy, and your silence 
bears witness to the fact. So be it — until we gather 
scalps together at Portmamock, and I play you for 
your boots, which, most likely, are unpaid for. 

You should know that Jules Farman’s informa- 
tion sent me to London, and from London pell-mell 
to the East Coast of England, where I am to find 
Mimi the Simpleton among a company of clowns, 
and to withdraw her immediately from that humor- 


The Show Girl 


111 


ous if unwashed society. If Farman is to be believed, 
the girl left us deliberately at Poissy, met an old 
comrade of the Fetes upon the outskirts of Paris, 
joined his troupe immediately; and having acquired 
the distinction of dancing a Spanish dance which is 
not Spanish, and of playing upon a guitar which is 
no guitar at all, set out with certain vagrants of the 
city to amuse the desperadoes of the outskirts and 
their obliging families. 

This company appears to have prospered for a 
little while, and then to have been drowned, partly 
by drink and partly by the winds of adversity. It 
broke up at Pheims, sent straggling members on to 
Brussels, there fell in with an Englishman of enter- 
prise, was re-organised by him and wafted over to 
our native country where upon the sandy shore or 
the less accommodating shingle it amuses the pros- 
perous of suburbia and bears witness once more to 
the smallness of this terrestial globe and the fertile 
resource of its inhabitants. 

Admit with me, my dear Paddy, that there is 
something wonderfully fine in this superb independ- 
ence. Reflect upon the homes you know, the moth- 
erhood there, the gregarious instincts of childhood, 
the bonds binding even the most wretched — do this, 
and then put side by side with it the life and actions 
of such a child as Mimi the Simpleton. She has not 


112 


The Show Girl 

known a home these many years. She cannot have 
the remotest idea of the meaning of motherhood. 
The streets of a city have tanght her the great les- 
sons of self-reliance and of self-help. She is not 
afraid to be alone. All the terrors which inflict the 
man of substance, bills payable and bills due, the 
rise or fall of values, doubts concerning the future, 
the perils of ambition, the bitterness of loss, these 
have no meaning for Mimi the Simpleton. Let the 
sun. shine and she will laugh. Give her bread and 
coflee and she has the riches of Croesus. Take her 
to a cafe, where the lights dance and the fiddles are 
busy, and you are opening to her the floodgates of 
Paradise. Fortune is powerless against armour such 
as this. What matters it if the bread be lacking to- 
day — will not to-morrow be more generous? Who 
shall complain that the sun sets in a cloud, when he 
will rise in splendour at dawn? 

You may ask me, Paddy, how it comes to be, if 
this be Mimi’s creed of life, that I would intrude 
upon it with a more exacting philosophy or a friend- 
ship that is critical? I shall not attempt to answer 
these questions. I am drawn to this child, I know 
not by what spell. It is not love, as men commonly 
employ that word. I do not seek, be sure of it, to 
put shame upon her, or to ask her to be the instru- 
ment of passion. But she has become necessary to 


The Show Girl 


113 


my life. The vagrancy of the years has brought me 
to this, that there is just one other vagrant upon the 
road with whom I would share the wigwam, just one 
other little comrade who must help me to light the 
camp fire and to watch by it when the sun has set. 
To this end I am pursuing Mimi upon this Eastern 
strand. To this selfish purpose I am about to com- 
mand that she shall cast off the Spaniards and re- 
member the lessons of yesterday. She may refuse 
or she may consent — but I shall pursue the issue if 
necessary through the years. 

Accompany me, then, to this “gay” resort ; follow 
me to the sandy shore of Lowestoft; but particularly, 
my dear Paddy, to the temporary home of my 
cousin, Arthur Warrington, who is here as a locum 
tenens , and has already fascinated a large number of 
females and a smaller (a much smaller) number of 
pious males. Arthur, I must admit, was not as 
pleased as he might have been to see me. The ex- 
clamation that he uttered was not altogether ecclesi- 
astical, nor do I choose to remember it; but it did 
not imply welcome, not as you and I understand 
the word. When he had recovered the shock, he 
confessed to me that he believed me to be dying in 
Paris, and was naturally much relieved to find that 
his alarms were groundless. 

“I think you wrote me to that effect, Arthur,” 


114 The Show Girl 

said I. “If I did not reply to your letter, pray for- 
give me.” 

“Oh,” says he, blushing to the roots of his beau- 
tiful auburn hair, “I do not think that I wrote, 
Henry — I had not your address — but we were both 
distressed, greatly distressed, I will say.” 

“Well,” said I, “you seem to have been worrying, 
Arthur — but say no more about it ; for here I am as 
sound as a smacksman and as hungry. What’s more, 
I have come to stop with you for a week or two if 
you will have me, which, if I remember your invita- 
tions correctly, is a pleasure you have been looking 
forward to for a long time. Now, isn’t it, Arthur? 
or am I mistaken?” 

Well, he stammered and stuttered again, and 
was in the middle of a parable about the green room 
and the pink room, when in comes cousin Martha, 
who is one of the j oiliest little women in Suffolk 
and as clever a flirt as ever was yoked to a parson’s 
cassock. Be sure Martha had her lord and master 
down in a minute and was trampling upon him in 
two. What! to turn their own flesh and blood into 
the streets — who ever heard of such a thing! Of 
course I must stay with them. And wouldn’t I be 
useful, too! She thought of that in a minute. 

“Don’t you know we’re to have a Pageant here,” 
says she, “of course you paj, Henry?” 


The Show Girl 


115 


“Of course/’ said I, “anything that you tell me 
to do is done immediately, Martha. Shall we paj 
now or await a more solitary occasion?” 

She expressed some confusion at this, and hast- 
ened to explain that they were about to have a 
Pageant at Lowestoft in which they would celebrate 
the early arrival of the Danes in England and the 
glorious victories of Queen Boadicea. There were 
to he real Norsemen and real ships — to say nothing 
of bloody fights on the foreshore and the gathering 
of the clans upon such heights as this land of marsh 
and marigolds can command. 

“Arthur is to he a monk,” says she. “Of course 
he will be a Protestant monk, hut he will wear 
sandals and shave his hair. I am to play a British 
maiden, Harry. I shall wear a bearskin upon my 
shoulders and dye my hair red — now don’t you think 
it will look beautiful?” 

I assured her that nothing could he finer; and 
“as for the reputation of the late Mrs. Astley of 
glorious memory, whose hair was to he wrapped 
about her feet whenever she stooped to the earth 
to do it, that,” said I, “is already perished.” 

This flattery was by no means unwelcome to 
cousin Martha. She told me that they were having 
great trouble with the townsfolk, who had entered 
into the fray almost with too much spirit — especially 


116 


The Show Girl 


a local vendor of wines, who wanted to play a 
modern monk Roger and to roll kegs of beer down 
the hills to the sea. There were many candidates, 
I discovered, for the maidens’ parts, especially such 
maidens as were to be carried in the arms of the 
barbarians. Rot less popular was the office of Druid, 
who would cut the mistletoe provided by the Army 
and Ravy Stores and generally conduct the sacred 
rites as tradition and Christmas have sanctioned 
them. 

“And what do you do, Arthur?” I asked the 
parson, “and what, if you please, is a Protestant 
monk? Forgive the ignorance which remembers so 
little history. Of course it is a showy part, or they 
would not have asked you to play it. You were 
always a bit of an actor, weren’t you, cousin ? Don’t 
you remember when you came out to us at Bordeaux, 

that little Mademoiselle Charcot who ” 

He exclaimed, “Hush, hush!” — it is astonishing 
how rarely a cleric is tolerant of reminiscences — and 
when my cousin little Martha implored me to tell 
her the whole story, Arthur silenced her immediately 
by an answer to my previous question. 

“A Protestant monk is one who carried the evan- 
gels before the days of the Papacy ” 

“Then against what did he protest, Arthur?” 
“Against the pagan intolerance of his day — just 


The Show Girl 


117 


as we protest in our own time against the pagan 
intolerance of the social world. I intend to show 
the people that their vices are not changed from 
those of fifteen hundred years ago ” 

“What a lively business. Do you have a hand ?” 

“It is not seemly to jest upon such a subject, 
Henry.” 

“Oh, I know it — pray forgive me. Of course 
you are quite right. The old gods are far from done 
with yet. Venus, I think, still gets an engagement 
occasionally, and Janus is often looked in the face 
by the morning papers. I admit that there is still 
something to be said for bearskins, while caves should 
be a godsend to the man who has just come down 
from Carey-street. Why don’t some of you parsons 
set us an example? Sell that thou hast — especially 
your brewery shares, Arthur — and live in a cave. 
I’ll bet you what you like that cousin Martha in a 
bearskin would fill your church every Sunday though 
half the bishops in England were at the shop oppo- 
site.” 

“The shop, Henry! Has Paris taught you to 
call a church a shop ?” 

“In Paris, my dear Arthur, there are no monks. 
The Government has done the protesting.” 

“For the good of France, undoubtedly. The pure 
religion.” 


118 


The Show Girl 


“Your religion, Arthur — but look here, I’m not 
out for a theological argument. Let us talk of the 
Pageant. What does Martha suggest that I should 
play?” 

“Would you like to be a knight in armour, Harry, 
and buy your own armour?” 

“That’s a generous proposal, Martha. Did 
knights in armour come over with the Danes?” 

“Oh, dear, no — I had forgotten that. Suppose 
you were a Horseman with beautiful long hair ” 

“To match yours, Martha ? Arthur wouldn’t 
like that.” 

“But a Horseman was such a splendid creature. 
You would have to speak in a guttural voice, Harry, 
and carry a scimitar.” 

“It sounds well, Martha ; but I should prefer the 
cellarer’s part. I could look after the wine vats 
very well. If that’s not it, how would you like me 
to play Henry the Eighth on the Field of the Cloth 
of Gold ? I could get the costumes from Fox’s ; and 
I tell you what, if you want any humour, I’ll drive 
on to the course in my motor car.” 

Arthur raised his eyes to heaven at this, while 
Martha seemed not a little affronted. They were 
both very serious about this business, poor dears, 
and not a little concerned for its success. To pacify 


The Show Girl 119 

them, I fell in with the Norseman idea, and then sat 
down to tea. 

You can have no idea, Paddy, of the meaning 
of these pageants to country towns, or of the en- 
thusiasm they excite. People are in and out of this 
house every ten minutes to consult the “Master.” 
Young girls, who would have blushed to show their 
ankles yesterday, are popping themselves in skins 
and sandals with the glee of children. There is an 
eloquent Free Church Minister staying here who 
preaches twice every quarter against the theatre, 
and is now about to appear as a Druid priest with a 
sickle. He rehearses his part like any actor at the 
Haymarket. Frivolity is immediately resented. 
When I suggested that a fleet of motor-boats should 
bring the Norseman to the shore, just to contrast the 
old ideas with the new, shocked looks met me, and 
an open protest. The most trivial mistake costs its 
maker a reproof. I have just heard Arthur deliver 
a sound rating to a wretched tailor who thought that 
a Dane might very well carry a musket, and pro- 
duced one left to him by his great-grandfather. The 
majesty of the Pageant brooks no levity. 

It will be apparent to you that I had little op- 
portunity for any really private talk with my be- 
loved cousin during these first days of my arrival, 
nor does there appear any possibility of my finding 


120 


The Show Girl 


one until this mummery is over. For that matter, 
I am very doubtful of the utility of such a proceed- 
ing, nor do I think that I shall profit by it. A 
sportsman would consent to my plan immediately; 
but Arthur is not a sportsman. I shall propose to 
him that we divide the inheritance, and have done 
with it: but I know from the outset he will find 
some shifty plea upon which he may excuse himself. 
If he does, I am what the world calls a ruined man 
— which is to say, Paddy, that I must work for my 
bread like any other decent fellow, and not complain 
if the loaf is yesterday’s. 

Sometimes I admit that the change will be stu- 
pendous. I have wanted for nothing, as you know, 
since I was a little child. My poor father indulged 
me in every way, so that now, at the mature age of 
twenty-four, I am as blase as many a man. of forty. 
All that any sane bachelor can need is to be pur- 
chased by seven thousand pounds a year. I can run 
a motor-car, keep a small sailing yacht, hire a shoot, 
travel. I need no house, for the finest hotels are 
open to me, with all their luxuries. From that to 
abject poverty is to be a swift descent. Paddy, I 
shall have a subsistence, but nothing more. The 
rest will go to dear cousin Arthur — to the glory of 
God and the purchase of a manor-house he has his 
eye upon. 


The Show Girl 


121 


Meanwhile, there is always Mimi. Would she 
come to me, I wonder, if I were poor? It might he 
so; in which case one of the Beatitudes would again 
be justified, and Harry Gastonard awakened in an 
instant from his lethargy. I shall ask her this ques- 
tion when I find her — to-night or to-morrow, as the 
case may he, Paddy. 

Meanwhile, waft me your blessing across the 
emerald seas, and find me, as always, Your friend, 

Harry Gastonard. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


[The Reverend Arthur Warrington writes in all 
haste to his Solicitor, Mr. James Frogg, of Ser- 
jeant’s Inn, Strand.] 

St. Philip’s, Lowestoft. 

Feast of St. Alphcnsus. 

James Fogg, Esq. 

Dear Mr. Fogg, — I am writing in much haste 
to inform you that my cousin, Henry Gastonard, 
has returned from Paris, and has had the effrontery 
to come here. 

I trust I am not lacking in charity, nor harder 
than my fellows, but the life this young man has 
led in Paris makes him no fit companion for my 
wife, who, I regret to say, appears to have taken a 
fancy to him, and insists upon his remaining with us. 

I write, therefore, to ask you if this will imperil 
in any way my hopes under the will of Martha’s 
uncle; are we doing right to have Henry here, and 
is there any possibility of the judges construing this 
as a consent upon my part to any division of the 
valuable property? Please inform me at once that 
122 


The Show Girl 


123 


I may convince Mrs. Warrington of her folly, and 
put an end to this foolish infatuation. — Dear Mr. 
Frogg, yours very faithfully, 

Arthur Warrington. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


[Paddy O’Connell apologises for his silence.] 

The Dormy House, Portmarnock. 

August 3d, 1905. 

Dear Harry, — I should have told you before 
that you did wisely to leave Paris, and, please God, 
to see that “iligant faymale” no more. ’Tis many 
a man that goes to the devil when he might have 
gone any other road for the asking of a cheap ticket 
— and you, I am glad to see, are now restored to 
your senses and safely back in the land of the 
Sassenach, where I wish you much prosperity. You 
have wits of your own, man, and a lively presence. 
Let me implore you to use them in some honorable 
occupation, if it is only to spite that long-legged 
beggar of a parson, who would drive the very saints 
out of heaven should he by any chance arrive in the 
neighbourhood of that highly praised locality. 

Meanwhile, Harry, I am waiting for your news 
of Mimi. What a droll little witch she was to be 
sure — and, man, ’tis lucky for ye that I am your 
friend, or the Lord knows where she would have 
124 


The Show Girl 


125 


landed me. Seek her out by all means and restore 
her to civilisation. Ye’ll never need to be ashamed 
of her in any company. There are women who are 
born to be the light of men’s lives; and if ever I 
saw one of the kind, the little lady whom Greuze 
should have painted is one of the company. Find 
her, I say, and play a gentleman’s part towards her. 
You’ll never regret it, my boy. 

I am writing you but a brief letter, for the 
golfers here have been playing games upon this old 
bird and ruffling his plumage excessively. Yester- 
day, young Willie Jackson made me a bet of a sover- 
eign that he’d drive a ball off the face of his watch, 
and I took him immediately. Well, he goes out to 
the tee as cool as a martyr at the stake, pops his 
watch down on the sand, sticks a ball on the top of 
it, and smashes the whole lot to blazes. You could 
have heard me laughing two holes off as I paid the 
money and chaffed him. 

“’Tis to the watchmaker ye’ll be taking that 
same,” says I, “and asking him what’s wrong with 
the works?” — for there wasn’t a ha’p’orth of the 
watch left, not enough to put in a teaspoon. To 
which he answered, as impudent as anything: 

“I think not, Paddy; it was a penny watch I 
bought in Dublin three days ago.” 

Ye may think that I didn’t show my nose in the 


126 


The Show Girl 


club-house any more that day, Henry. And, as if this 
wasn’t enough, young Philpots persuaded me to play 
him with one of those pneumatic balls to-day, and a 
fine game he had with me. The harder I hit it — 
and you know that driving is my pride, being able 
to outdrive any man in Ireland when I hit one — the 
harder I hit it the shorter, so to speak, it went, until 
some of my finest brassies weren’t travelling twenty 
yards, and my cleeks not ten. 

“Be hanged to the ball!” says I at last, “I be- 
lieve it’s bewitched.” 

“Oh, come,” says young Philpots, “nothing of 
the kind Paddy; ’tis your precious bad driving. 
How, what did you drink with your dinner last 
night?” 

“Hot more than half a pint of whisky, and per- 
haps not so much.” 

“Then your eyesight must be going, Paddy. I’d 
see a doctor if I were you when I got back to town.” 

“There’s no better eyes in Ireland,” says I; and 
I picked the ball up and put it in my pocket. After 
that I knocked young Philpots all to blazes, so I 
knew it was the ball, and would have said so if the 
Archangel Gabriel himself had come along and 
denied me. When I got back to the club-house, I 
took young Martin, the pro., aside, and asked him a 
few questions. 


The Show Girl 127 

“Why did ye sell me such a thing of a ball as 
that, Martin?” I asked him. 

He professed great astonishment. 

“There’s nay a better baa’ made,” says he. 

“Will ye play a round with it yourself, Martin?” 

“Ay, when there’s wind in it.” 

“Wind!” cried I, beginning to understand. 

“True,” says he, “when there’s wind in it; but 
no’ when a gentleman has pricked her wi’ a needle 
before the other gentleman ganged oot.” 

Henry — I saw it in a moment! That young 
devil of a Philpots had let all the air out of the ball 
before I began to play with it. The story’s all over 
the place — I’ll never show my face here for a month, 
unless it be to pull the noses of the pair of them for 
the pleasure of saying good-bye to such jovial com- 
panions. My dear Harry, yours as of old, 

Paddy O’Connell. 


CHAPTER XV. 


[“The Chimes” at Yarmouth, and what Henry Gas- 
tonard learned of them.] 

The New Vicarage, Lowestoft, 
August 6th, 1905. 

Dear Paddy, — Byron told us that: 

“Christians have burned each other, quite per- 
suaded; 

That all the Apostles would have done as they 
did.” 

I am not quite sure that my dear cousin, Arthur, 
would not put me immediately to the stake were it 
not for this worldly little wife of his, who leaps 
through the hoop of his philosophy like a clown at 
the circus, and is never so pleased as when her antics 
move him to paroxysms of jealousy. 

Let me, none the less, postpone for the moment 
a narration of this particular tragedy, and thank you 
for your letter. I am sorry to hear that they let the 
wind out of your pneumatic golf ball, and so pro- 
voked you to expressions not found in the catechism 
128 


The Show Girl 


129 


— but, my dear Paddy, is not half the world flogging 
balls so treated, and are not the fortunate few those 
who can command a superfluity of that necessary gas 
by which mankind achieves success? 

I give you this for consolation. Would to heaven 
you could console me as effectually. For, to be can- 
did, Paddy, I am as hard driven by my doubts as 
ever a man was in this world. Yesterday I saw Mimi 
for the second time. My first visit was paid to her 
almost immediately after I had written to you; and 
a sorry enough pilgrimage it was, so full of drab 
shades and mournful harmonies that I write of it 
with reluctance, and do not speak of it at all. 

Recollect that I had traced the child to the old 
town of Yarmouth, and was determined to seek her 
there. Of course, my car is here, and serves me well 
at these times. A fast journey in the famous 
“forty,” which has carried us together upon many a 
merry venture, brought me to that fishing village 
they call Gorleston; then to an even more crabbed 
street — the main thoroughfare of Yarmouth to wit. 
I know nothing of these places, but the approach to 
them depressed me greatly, and left me but ill pre- 
pared for the really superb sea-front which a side 
street of Yarmouth presently disclosed to me. 

It is inconceivable, Paddy, that such a parade as 
this should be so little known to the children of civil- 


130 


The Show Girl 


isation. Depict a wonderful strand of the purest 
golden sand, a gentle sea with many ships in a nar- 
row street, a wide thoroughfare abutting upon the 
promenade, and a mile of houses as a background to 
it all. Do this, I say, and you will still have the 
poorest idea of Yarmouth — for its glory lies in the 
booths they have erected upon the sand, and in its 
(entertainments, its wide piers, its floral halls, its 
orderly gardens, and superabundant • bandstands. 
Such a city upon a seashore I have never seen in all 
my life. I drove my car to a decent hotel on the 
front, and I descended presently, feeling as lost as 
an African set down suddenly at Ludgate-circus. 

This would have been about a quarter to eight 
o’clock of a splendid summer evening. Thousands 
of lights were now blazing upon the promenade, 
lights large and small, and of all the hues of the 
rainbow. Turn your ears where you would, music 
pleased or offended them. And what music, Paddy! 
— now that of a fine military band, again of a hurdy- 
gurdy, and upon that the tinny notes of a worn 
piano, laboriously thumped by some child of the 
academies. ISTor was this sufficient, for youths passed 
raving of Jenny or Sarah, and here and there a 
woman screeched some incoherent lines which the 
music-hall or the sea beach had taught her. 

I crossed the street, and ventured upon the 


The Show Girl 


131 


golden sands. Tlie barbarity of the scene impressed 
me strangely. That such an artist, such a bom child 
of all that is really the fruit of genius as Mimi the 
Simpleton, should have sunk to this, inflicted me 
with an intolerable melancholy which nothing could 
relieve. 

Here, Paddy, here I must find Mimi the Sim- 
pleton. To this ultima thule some inspiration of 
the nomad’s life had wafted her. You can have lit- 
tle idea of the emotions which followed me to the 
quest of her as I threaded the human lanes, and 
would have closed my ears to their voices, but could 
not. 

But I will not weary you with a recital to so lit- 
tle purpose. Let it be sufficient to say that when I 
discovered Mimi at last, it was not upon the lower 
sands where the meaner booths are set, but in a con- 
siderable wooden structure built almost against the 
promenade, and promising at least a better atmos- 
phere and a better company. 

Here a bill at the door informed that “The 
Chimes” were performing, and that for the inconsid- 
erable sum of sixpence I might be privileged to hear 
the famous singer Wat TJrling in his famous song 
“Bonny Bill,” and also to witness the gyrations of 
the Spanish dancer “Alphonsine.” Other lines ac- 
corded notoriety to a certain Jack Bendall, and to a 


132 


The Show Girl 


person by the name of Bertie Idden, who, it appears, 
had played the banjo before the crowned heads of 
Europe, and was still alive to tell the tale. These 
promises I read swiftly, and, paying a shilling for 
the front row, I passed into the place, and saw 
Mimi again. 

It was a quaint scene, Paddy. Some fifty square 
yards were fenced in by a wooden awning and pro- 
vided with benches and garden-seats. The platform 
at the further end had a tom Union Jack for its 
emblem, and a Spanish flag to cross it. Here stood 
a piano, and two or three chairs for the performers, 
of whom there appeared to be five, including the 
lady accompanist. All were dressed in quasi-Pierrot 
costumes of black and yellow ; and Mimi, I observed, 
wore precisely similar garments to the men. 

As to the entertainment, it consisted of a part- 
song sung in three keys and wofully discordant ; but 
Mimi left the group at the end of it, and returned 
shortly afterwards in a black spangled dress and a 
quiet, respectable mantilla. 

I took my seat in a garden-chair to the left of 
the stage, and watched the child closely. She had 
not seen me, and I perceived that her whole soul 
went out to this business of the dancing. Perhaps 
it stood to her for a reflex of Paris in a dismal land. 
I can imagine her recalling the balls of the Butte — 


The Show Girl 


133 


all the familiar faces of the Quat-Z-Arts — and be- 
lieving for the time being that the music was made 
by Jean Delmas, and that Chardibert was her part- 
ner in the dance. She had no talent for such a class 
of entertainment — so much I confess at once. Her 
dancing was spirited, but inelegant; she threw her- 
self about with the uncouth gestures of a child at 
play. When she sang, it was not in Spanish, but 
in that argot of the atelier, which even a Frenchman 
in the audience might not have understood. But I 
understood it, Paddy ; and, as though she were speak- 
ing to me alone of all the company, I watched her 
intently until her eye caught mine, and she ceased 
to dance as suddenly as though a strong man held 
her ankles to the floor. 

This was for the merest fraction of a minute. 
A seedy individual in a long grey overcoat — or 
rather, an overcoat which had once been grey — strode 
forward from his nook behind the piano and ad- 
dressed her in rough tones. She answered him with 
a nod, and continued to dance immediately, which 
provoked a whole torrent of bad language, and a 
subsequent draught from a substantial flask when 
the back of the piano somewhat hid the man from 
the audience. Mimi, upon her part, now danced on 
as though she had never seen me at all. I did not 
catch her eye again, not once, until the entertain- 


134 The Show Girl 

ment was done and the people had quitted the 
enclosure. 

Be sure, however, that I had no intention of 
leaving without seeing her. That would have been 
a folly surpassing all. No sooner was the crowd 
departed than I walked up to the platform and 
spoke to her in the French she understood so well. 

“Bon soir, Mimi. Shall we go and fish for gud- 
geons at the Chatelet?” 

“Ah, mes enfants — it is Monsieur Henry who 
has come back.” 

“What are you doing in this place, Mimi?” 

“I am dancing, Monsieur Henry.” 

“I see perfectly well; but you are tired of danc- 
ing, and are now going to return to Paris with me.” 

“That is impossible, Monsieur Henry. I have 
not got a boat.” 

“But I shall buy one. Go and tell these gentle- 
men that you can dance no more for them. I shall 
wait until you have done so.” 

She shrugged her shoulders defiantly. 

“Does Madame d’Alengon send you here, Mon- 
sieur Henry ?” 

“I will tell you when you have spoken to your 
friends.” 

She was about to answer me when the greasy 


The Show Girl 135 

man stepped forward and intervened. He spoke in 
the jargon of the music halls. 

“ ’Ere,” he said, cocking a vile cigar in the 
corner of a huge mouth, “and what’s all this?” 

“I have come to take this young lady to her 
friends,” said I. 

“Ho,” cried he, “and ’ave you? Well, a bloomm’ 
long journey that’s going to be. ’Ere, you clear out 
of this — we don’t ’ave none of your sort ’ere.” 

I stepped up upon the platform and looked him 
squarely in the face. 

“My man,” said I, “by whose authority did you 
take this girl from her home, and when will you 
show it to the police ?” 

He turned a little pale, and took his cigar from 
his mouth hurriedly. 

“What’s that to you?” he asked. 

“It is everything to me,” said I, “as you will 
presently discover.” 

“Is she ’ere against ’er will, then? Arst ’er 
yourself. Ain’t I givin’ ’er advantages ? Who says 
I took ’er from ’er friends — who says it?” 

“I say it, and presently will prove it.” 

“Oh, you do ? do yer? Well, my name’s Jack 
Bendall, and my ’ome’s the Pav. at Ealing. How 
go and prove it — let me see you do it. Why, half 
the profession will answer for my character. Who’s 


136 


The Show Girl 


going to answer for yours — and who the deuce are 
you, all said and done?” 

He did not wait for me to answer, hut called 
Mimi up to him. 

“Do you know this man?” he asked her. 

“Yes, Monsieur; that is Monsieur Henry.” 

“Is ? e related to you?” 

“He is one of my friends — I knew him in Paris.” 

“A — student, I suppose. Just as I thought. 
Well, now Vs going out of ’ere, and right sharp, 
too.” 

Imagine the fellow’s impudence, Paddy. He 
strode up to me in a threatening attitude and laid 
his hand upon my collar; but not a second time, for 
I tripped him before you could count two, and threw 
him headlong down among his own stalls. 

“Hands off,” I said when he had picked him- 
self up, “and learn to behave yourself. I am now 
going to the police station. You can follow me there 
if you like.” 

I did not wait a moment longer, hut marched 
from the place — Mimi watching me with wide-open 
eyes, another woman snivelling on the bosom of 
her “poor Jack,” and that worthy himself close upon 
my heels. As it turned out, my car stood within 
twenty yards of the place, and the sight of it with 
the great flaming headlamps and the gaping crowd 


The Show Girl 


137 


about it sobered the clown immediately. He pushed 
up to me with a sidling gesture and spoke his first 
civil word. 

“Ho offence meant, guv’nor. Gawd witness I 
never ’armed the girl. Don’t be ’asty like. So help 
me ’eaven, my own daughter ain’t been treated 
better. How, what’s it all about — you ain’t going 
to do nothink imprudent, guv’nor?” 

I turned upon him and took him at his word. 
After all, I had no case for a police-court, and he 
might have beaten me hollow there. It was prudent 
to temporise, and I did not lose the opportunity. 

“I am the guardian of this child,” said I. “Your 
honesty is not at stake if you listen to reason. I 
don’t hold you responsible for her appearance here, 
but I must speak to her immediately. Show me 
where that can be done, and we may settle the 
affair yet.” 

“If that’s all, guv’nor, you can speak to ’er in 
the show and welcome. I didn’t know I was talking 
to a gent like you — though. Gawd’s truth, I’d pay 
a fiver to learn that fall.” 

“Oh,” says I, showing him a five-pound note, “no 
need to try it a second time. Take the company out 
and give them supper at my expense. I suppose 
that’s your last show to-night ?” 

“The last’s at half-past nine. You can ’ave 


138 


The Show Girl 


twenty minutes with her. She said her name was 
Mimi Oliver and that she came from Bordeaux. Is 
it the truth, guv’nor, or a lie?” 

“It’s a lie,” said I. “She left my house in Paris 
to go to you. Now leave us together, please; I have 
much to say to her.” 

He nodded assent, and I went up to the platform 
again. The show was quite deserted by this time, 
and the performers made a hasty supper in the 
corner over by the piano. As for Mimi, she sat 
upon a bench a little way from the others, dressed 
in her spangles and wearing that pretty smile I have 
never yet been able to fathom as long as I have 
known her. Whether she was pleased by my return, 
or still angry, I cannot say. But I went up and 
sat beside her; and then I knew, Paddy, that nothing 
but her courage kept her from weeping. 

Of this interview, with its new issue, of all that 
she confessed to me, and of my plans for her, a 
letter to-morrow must tell you. I am but just in 
time to catch the post, and, to be plain with you, 
old friend, my heart is full of a sadness I cannot 
define and would write of to no other. The memory 
of this interview recalls it powerfully. Let me then 
sleep upon it all — and bidding you a hearty good 
night, remain — My dear Paddy, your friend, 

Harry Gastonard. 


CHAPTER XYI. 


[Henry Gastonard gives a further account of his 
meeting with Mimi the Simpleton.] 

The Hew Vicarage, Lowestoft, 
August 8th, 1905. 

Dear Paddy, — I was too seedy to write to you 
yesterday, nor did my good cousin’s chatter con- 
cerning the things of this world help me to get 
better. Arthur is the kind of man who buys in an 
earthly market and would realise in a celestial. He 
began to talk of motor securities this morning, and 
did not cease until he was called to the church for 
Litany — but he went with thunder on his brow, for 
litttle Martha insisted on shewing me the green- 
houses meanwhile, and the man is as jealous as 
Othello. 

You will readily imagine that I linger in this 
house chiefly for the comedy of it. I believe that 
Arthur would have told me to go this morning if 
pretty Martha had not cut in before him. “Arthur 
is so delighted to have you here,” says she, looking 
hard at him across the table, “there are so few 
139 


140 


The Show Girl 


educated folk in these parts that it is a real kindness 
for any friend to come and see him.” You should 
have seen the black looks he cast back at her. I do 
believe the poor man nearly choked himself with 
the toast he was eating. 

I shall go over to the hotel at Yarmouth to- 
morrow, Paddy — later on, perhaps, from there to 
Cromer, where Mimi goes with the troupe. So 
much tells you in a word that I have not persuaded 
her to quit the gentleman of the cockney accent, 
or to forsake the delights of posing before an 
ignorant multitude as the Senorita Alphonsine. 
What is in her mind I do not know for any certainty. 
She understands, she must understand, that I have 
no interest in Lea d’Alengon, and never had. But 
a jealous woman, more especially when the Butte 
has taught her to be jealous, is one of the most in- 
comprehensible of all mysteries, and such, I begin 
to fear, will our little friend Mimi remain. 

I talked to her very frankly the other evening, 
perhaps as frankly as ever I spoke to her in all 
my life. 

“You left me at Poissy because Madame Lea 
came there,” I said — and then I asked her — “Was 
that just, Mimi? Could I prevent her coming?” 

To which she answered: 

“You could have prevented it, Monsieur Henry. 


The Show Girl 141 

No woman goes to a man who does not wish to see 
her — she writes to him.” 

I laughed at this. How like the Mimi of la 
Galette. 

“Of course, old Georges Oleander taught you 
to say that. I remember it was one of his great, 
also foolish, sayings. Those were famous days, 
Mimi. I wonder what you would have said if I had 
forbidden you to see Mr. Barrymore or Count 
Charles, or any of the friends you used to know? 
Suppose I had been jealous, as I had the right to 
be- ” 

“But you, you, Monsieur Henry — you were not 
my lover; why should you be jealous ?” 

“Mimi,” said I, “we are going to forget the past 
just as we would forget a sad book that we have 
been reading. What is to prevent us? I shall 
never see Madame Lea again. If I saw her a 
thousand times, it would make no difference. You 
know that I love you, Mimi. How often must I 
say it to make you believe?” 

The words moved her to some emotion. There 
is no more intelligent face in Europe than hers, 
none more beautiful ; and I could see that the child 
was wrestling with some great temptation, unknown 
to me, and unconfessed. 

“It would be folly to speak of it, Monsieur 


142 


The Show Girl 


Henry,” she said presently; "I am not fit to be 
your wife. You are rich, and we are no longer at 
the Maison du bon Tabac. I tried to follow you 
out into the world, Monsieur Henry, but I lost you 
there — and I shall never find you again.” 

“Mimi,” said I, “there has always been this be- 
tween us. You call me rich, but in a few months’ 
time I may be poorer even than these people who 
employ you. Is not that enough for you? Shall 
I make myself poor to-morrow because riches keep 
you from me ? Is that your wish, Mimi ?” 

“I know the truth,” she said quietly; “your 
great Irlandais told it to me. You are rich, and 
if you work you will remain rich. Do not believe 
those who tell you that the poor are happy, Monsieur 
Henry. That is what the rich say to defend them- 
selves. Oh, do you think that I can be happy so far 
away from France and among these strange people ? 
Would I not return to-morrow if I could do so?” 

“You shall return, Mimi — we will go together.” 

She laughed drolly, turning the pathos of it with 
the cleverness a born actress alone could command. 

“To the Butte,” she cried, “on the high road? 
We will sup at the Lapin Agil and breakfast at the 
Capitol. That’s what I dream of when I dance be- 
fore the people — but you are not in my dreams, 
Monsieur Henry ; I think of a Paris which you have 


The Show Girl 143 

left — I do not see you any longer among my 
friends.” 

“Because you yourself have determined that it 
shall not be so.” 

“bio — because you were not born of us; because 
you are an Englishman who has work to do in your 
own country. I am in my own world even in this 
poor place. It is not your world — it must never 
be so.” 

***** 

This was the sum of it, Paddy, often repeated. 
This child believes that all my love for the Butte 
and its people is but a sham affection, that it will 
pass, that I am born to riches and position. She 
is clever enough to think that a marriage with me 
would be a false step, leading neither to her happi- 
ness nor to mine. All this fine philosophy of hers 
is no sounder than the bloom upon a flower. If I 
could conjure up the old house in Paris, people it 
with the old figures, recall the old precarious life, 
the days of poverty, the days of comparative riches, 
the empty cupboards, the chiding corks — if I could 
do this, and say, “Mimi, come back to me,” she 
would be in my arms in an instant. But she is 
afraid of her new situation ; London has chilled her 
finest instincts — she can think of me but as the 


144 


The Show Girl 


“great Monsieur Henry, of the Hotel St. Paul.” 
And between me and her a great barrier is fixed. 

How to combat this argument I know not. My 
threat to shed myself of my money is both idle and 
impossible — it is the word one whispers to a woman 
in an ecstasy of passion, and repeats with a shamed 
grin next morning. I feel, Paddy, that I could not 
support poverty — and yet here is poverty staring me 
already in the face, and promising, like the Devil in 
“Faust,” that he will have me some day. To you 
I put the problem, for God knows I can make little 
of it. Is there any way — any sane way — by which 
I can win this child’s love and make her my wife? 
Would it be a crime to do that? Am I a madman 
to be thinking of it at all ? Write to me, old friend, 
and speak in plain terms. The Paddy of the old 
time was never ashamed to do that. 

You may address your letter to the vicarage, for 
little Martha will see that everything is forwarded. 
I am tired already of this lantern- jawed cousin of 
mine, who nagged his wife for three hours last night 
because she would not turn me out, and prayed be- 
fore breakfast this morning for charity. I heard 
them quarrelling; the wall was not thick enough to 
keep those dread sounds out — but she silenced him 
in the end, though how, I do not know. When next 
I saw her she was wearing a bearskin on her shoul- 


The Show Girl 


145 


ders, and her hair was the colour of a terra-cotta 
house. They are to have the first dress rehearsal for 
the Pageant to-morrow — and Arthur, who has just 
preached another sermon against the theatre, is to 
be there with a megaphone. 

God bless him! He is the poorest creature in 
Suffolk, though not in the least aware of the fact. — 
Dear Paddy, yours dolefully, 

Harry Gastonard. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


[Paddy O’Connell lays down the law.] 

Glendalough, 
August 12th, 1905. 

Dear Harry, — What I would have you to do is 
to set about getting your living. ’Tis honest advice 
and the best I can give you — though it’s precious 
little I do in that line myself, and a poor hand I 
would be at the employment if my father — God rest 
his soul — had not done the business for me. 

I am little acquainted with the art of money- 
making, and no wise adviser in that matter. But 
I see plainly enough that if you do not set about 
earning your living, this parson man will be bank- 
ing your fortune and thanking God for it, while you 
will be next door to a beggar in the streets, and a 
mighty unsuccessful one at that. 

Let me ask you what you could bring to the child 
if .you lost your fortune. This gipsy notion is well 
enough when a man follows it by choice; but there 
is a time of life when you begin to sniff at the cook- 
ing-pot and to ask how many thorns are in your bed 
146 


147 


The Show Girl 

before you — and you will come to that before most 
of us, by reason of the habits you have acquired. 
Indeed, Harry, I am not sure that you understand 
at all what this loss of fortune may mean to you, 
nor do I believe your life will be worth living when 
you have lost it. 

You are young, you have a fine presence, people 
take a liking to the looks of you, you are by no 
means wanting in brains. Should you get on the 
Stock Exchange you would find clients enough — or, 
for that matter, you might turn your Art knowl- 
edge to some advantage and see what you can do 
in that line. 

Shake your wits together, my boy, and -make a 
start, to-morrow if you can. I couldn’t do it myself 
— unless I were taken up by those who would learn 
to ride, or golf, or play a decent hand at bridge ; but 
you can do it, Harry, for you have the brains; and 
if you love this little girl out of France, and if your 
heart is full because of her, you will lose no time in 
following my advice and preparing that home she 
will be willing enough to occupy. 

Meanwhile, see, for God’s sake, that no harm 
overtakes her. It’s worse than wicked to hear of 
the company she is in. Pay for a change of employ- 
ment and do not let her know that you have done 
it. Your purse may help to achieve this. Pull the 


148 


The Show Girl 


strings of it wide open, Harry, and put her in some 
decent way of life, in London for preference, and 
where you can watch over her. I have said from 
the first that the blood of the Bohemian runs strong 
in her veins. I doubt that you will ever tie her to 
any house or country — but the effort is worth the 
making, and you know that you have my good wishes 
in the matter. 

As for your prudence, your right to marry her or 
the wisdom of it, you know that I am a man who 
said be hanged to convention many years ago. 
What a sorry peep-show, what a play of shams and 
meanness and false pleasures is this social world we 
know, and into which we were born! I tell you 
that the hut on the mountain side — if there be good 
whisky therein and a decent golf course within rid- 
ing distance — is all the palace I will ever require; 
while, as for my friend Harry, if the great high road 
and the cafe at the far end of it are not his goal, 
then say that I know nothing of men and less of the 
sex that does us all the mischief. 

You will set about earning your living, Harry, 
and put Mimi to some decent employment unbe- 
known to her that you have done it. This is the 
wisdom and the wish of your old friend, Paddy. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


[In which we hear something of the Pageant at 

Lowestoft.] 

The Grand Hotel, Cromer, 
August 14th, 1905. 

Dear Paddy, — The Pageant at Lowestoft came 
and went on Saturday last — the occasion of its first 
representation — and your faithful epistler has de- 
parted with it under circumstances which should be 
made known to you. These were as ridiculous as 
they were inevitable; but they have left my good 
cousin in a sad state of mind, and his little wife no 
less agitated. 

I count it nothing less than a tragedy, Paddy, 
that your friend, Henry Gastonard, who would no 
more make love to another man’s wife than he would 
steal the spoons from his table, should twice carry 
a firebrand into a peaceful house and there extin- 
guish it not at all or but doubtfully. This, none the 
less, has been my undeserved fate. I quitted Lowe- 
stoft, leaving my cousin torn by jealousy concerning 
149 


150 


The Show Girl 


Martha and myself. His anger is as absurd as his 
suspicions; but of both you shall now hear. 

To begin with, let me say that I had some fine 
fun with him on Friday night upon my return from 
Yarmouth. The talk after dinner chanced to turn 
upon the ease or difficulty of making money; and, 
wishful to chaff Arthur, I began to speak of my own 
intentions. To have heard me you would have said 
that I had but to lift a finger to make ten thousand 
a year. I spoke of this scheme and of that, of the 
financiers I knew and the financiers who wished to 
know me. I mentioned young Gould casually, and 
threw in Harry Vanderbilt as though he were a 
paper-weight; to all of which Arthur listened en- 
tranced. His colour alternated between that of the 
departing rainbow and the newly-imported orange. 
There were moments when he was at a loss hojv to 
address me at all. 

“Did you say that you were venturing your own 
capital in these affairs?” he asked me. The simple 
fellow, a child would have seen through the question. 

“Hot a penny of it,” said I, filling my glass with 
the Marsala, old in bottle, which he buys from a 
neighbouring grocer for one-and-three ; “not a penny 
of it, Arthur. You must understand that I am 
bringing the new French motor-cab companies to 
London, and when the Syndicate has put down two 


151 


The Show Girl 

hundred and fifty thousand, there should be some 
seven or eight for me as negotiatory vendor to be- 
gin with; and if they don’t pay me twelve or fifteen 
hundred a year afterwards to look after their inter- 
ests, I’m a Dutchman. What I wanted to ask you 
was just this: Do you think I am wise to take up 
such a thing as a motor-cab, or would you advise me 
to stick to the flotation of the new submarine com-, 
pany, in which you know that I have interest? You 
have great sagacity and perception, and so I put 
the question to you frankly.” 

Upon my word, Paddy, the man’s face was a 
study when I said this, and it was worth anything 
to hear him humming and hawing in the very best 
pulpit manner before he answered me. 

“A clergyman knows little of financial affairs,” 
he remarked, coughing slightly to cover his diffi- 
culty. “Undoubtedly, a cab is not a very dignified 
conveyance, and er — hem, the future of the motor- 
car is — that is — may be — a dusty one. I should con- 
sider the whole question very closely, Henry. There 
are two sides to it, as to every question.” 

“And to every cab, Arthur. Well, I shall take 
your advice, for, of. course, if I don’t do something 
very soon, you will be having my little lot and driv- 
ing a four-in-hand to Hurlingham. I don’t mean to 
let you do that, Arthur. I shall stick to the money; 


152 


The Show Girl 

though, if ever you want fifty for parochial uses, 
don’t forget to tell me.” 

He was visibly upset — he is not a man who can 
hide his feelings. I believe that if I had said the 
word, he would have consented to a compromise on 
the spot. But I am an obstinate fool, Paddy, and I 
feel that I would sooner sleep on the Embankment 
without a shirt to my back than part with one shil- 
ling to this disciple of the Law and the Profits who 
would spend it so ill. 

This badinage was a pretty prelude to what was 
to come. We were up early next morning, and the 
streets all a-blowing and a-growing before the fishing 
boats had come in. You do not know Lowestoft, 
Paddy, but you will please to understand that there is, 
beneath the northern cliff, a very pretty stretch of 
grass land, whereon golfers and others disport them- 
selves. Toward this at eleven o’clock in the morn- 
ing half the inhabitants and all the visitors wended 
their way; and here the great battle between the 
invading Danes and the inhospitable Britons was to 
take place, directed by my cousin Arthur, who car- 
ried a megaphone and took his station upon a watch- 
tower. As this is not a horsey locality, the most 
part of us went afoot, and a fine, straggling show 
of hire-purchase assassins we must have looked to 
any sane man who had happened upon us at hazard. 


The Show Girl 


153 


Just imagine the narrow, fishy street of a fishy 
town packed from end to end with twentieth-century 
monks, romping British maidens, Druid priests, 
Danes, and Norsemen. Depict a fat grocer 
waddling along in a tin-pot helmet and a tunic down 
to his knees. Create for yourself the image of a 
substantial matron in a frock that looks like a — but 
you have seen the catalogues of the linen houses and 
will spare my blushes. Over all wave the flags and 
the banners. There are a few horsemen — six-and- 
six the first hour, six shillings afterwards — a great 
many battle-axes, pikes, and spiked maces. The 
fishermen, who stare as we pass by, laugh vulgarly. 
Some of the youths, who are to do the fighting, begin 
already and need the police to separate them. I 
observe that the girls are all in a hurry to be car- 
ried screaming to the hills and that they rehearse 
their parts upon any opportunity, even the most 
trifling. 

Such was the beginning of the Pageant at Lowe- 
stoft. Never, I suppose, was Arthur Warrington 
in better form; it was better than any Criterion 
farce to hear him shouting the stage directions from 
his watch-tower. Of course, had he been a clever 
man, he would have engaged some genius from the 
theatres to have helped him as to the stage manage- 
ment; but he is not a clever man, and chaos followed 


154 


The Show Girl 


him to the battle-field. Oh, my dear Paddy, what 
a joy it was when that bellicose crowd heard him 
bawling: “Harps to the mound; all the lyres this 
side; ancient Britons, quick march; Danes ashore!” 
Could energy and a shrill voice have achieved suc- 
cess, Arthur assuredly would have been crowned 
there and then with a laurel; but, alas, what are 
energy and shrillness when your Druid priest is 
invariably in the refreshment tent and your Danes 
upset the boat which is bringing them ashore? 

You will remember that little Martha had per- 
suaded me to play the part of one of these Scandi- 
navian heroes, and a veritable sea-lion she said I 
looked when the costumier had finished with me. 
Though she herself stood for a British matron, I 
observed that her dress leaned toward the soubrette 
ideal, and that she proposed an early and satisfying 
adjournment to the tent wherein ices and other 
delicacies were vended. In this she was generally 
imitated. A more desultory battle, a wilder, more 
nonsensical puppet show, I have never seen upon 
any field of Europe. Danes playing leap-frog on the 
sands; Druids chasing each other, and the ladies — 
with sickle and artificial mistletoe — warriors flirting 
already when they should have been fighting; 
trumpeters passing their trumpets round for their 
neighbours to “have a blow;” monks talking politics 


155 


The Show Girl 

and passing each other the morning papers; fat men 
asking “Where do we go?” stout ladies no less at a 
loss. My dear Paddy, the hills would have rung 
with your laughter and the sea given it back to you 
in roaring harmonies. 

I will confess that we got something like order 
when the battle was done, and that some of the 
Druidical rites were pretty and imposing. A dance 
of “early British maidens,” in the afternoon, left 
footprints on the sands of time; but the attempt of 
a monk to join in the business came near to ruining 
it. From this moment onward toward sunset the 
affair showed some signs of a degeneration which 
boded ill for the later hours. I found myself with- 
out part or place in a disorderly ensemble, and I 
suggested to Martha that she should be carried off 
incontinently to the sea; and that we would go for 
a little row until the multitude had recovered its 
senses. To this she consented very gracefully, and, 
a boat being quickly found — for many watermen 
had come to the place 1 — I put off in it and soon left 
the madding crowd behind us. 

You must admit, Paddy, that there was little 
harm in this. We rowed in full view of the shore; 
as a Norseman it was my business thus to act in 
the presence of a British maiden. In a less romantic 
mood, I desired to have a little talk with pretty 


156 


The Show Girl 

Martha — for none was possible at her house — and 
to hear exactly what she thought of my own affairs 
and of my cousin’s interest in them. She is a candid 
little body and responded immediately to my invita- 
tion. I found her no less merry than eloquent, and, 
to be honest, she was not born for a parson’s wife. 

“Arthur thinks he’ll have your fortune,” she 
said; “he’s buying motor-cars already with it.” 

“And you encourage him, Martha?” 

“Women always encourage men when they wish 
to be extravagant in a proper way. But I don’t 
believe you’ll part with the money — and, to be 
honest, I hope you won’t.” 

“Those are not Arthur’s sentiments.” 

“Would they be mine if they were? Ho man 
is the better for a woman agreeing with him. Of 
course, I want Arthur to do well in the world, but 
that’s no reason why he should do it with your 
fortune, Harry. As it is, your father left him five 
thousand pounds, and he ought to be satisfied.” 

“Especially in view of the simple life, and all 
that. Is not Arthur a bit of a Socialist, Martha?” 

“Yes, he believes in having all his neighbours’ 
things in common. He preached about it several 
times — they don’t like it in the country, and some- 
one wrote to the Bishop.” 


The Show Girl 157 

“Did he suggest that his lordship should divide 
also ?” 

“Now you’re silly, Harry. What I wanted to 
tell you was that you really must begin to do some- 
thing in the world.” 

“I have blown a trumpet this very morning, and 
nearly cut off a Saxon’s head by accident. Is not 
that an achievement?” 

“It is the kind of achievement which sends 
Arthur buying motor-cars ” 

“To the glory of God, and the delight of the 
local repairer. Tell me, Martha, do you think I 
could earn any money, if I tried ? Is it quite a mad 
hope ?” 

“You could do so, Harry — you have brains 
enough. Arthur admits that — he read your article 
about East Anglia in the magazine, and is quite sure 
you have abilities.” 

“Strange term. I wonder how many men have 
gone to the devil because they had abilities?” 

“But you really have them, Harry. That little 
bust you sent me over from Paris a year ago was 
beautiful.” 

“Offer it to an art dealer in Piccadilly and see 
if he will give you five shillings for it. That kind 
of talent is the ruin of most of us. We touch the 
hem of Art’s garment, but she doesn’t stop to bless 


158 


The Show Girl 


us. If I had been bom a Portuguese Jew, and edu- 
cated in the Ghetto, I might begin to speak of abili- 
ties. There are few left in the ordinary way.” 

“But, at least, you might work, Harry.” 

“What man who is in love works ?” 

“You! In love! How, do tell me. Is it true 
— you aren’t joking, Harry?” 

“I am not joking, Martha. Look at me and see. 
I am in love with a little French lady who is danc- 
ing on Yarmouth beach. It was she who kept me 
away from you last night.” 

“How, that’s nonsense, and I shall not listen to 
you.” 

“I beg your pardon — you will listen as long as 
I go on talking. Ho woman shuts her ears to a 
man’s love story — she couldn’t if she tried.” 

“But — it — it would be disgraceful, Harry!” 

“Most of the pleasant things in life are disgrace- 
ful — from a narrow point of view. I think you 
used to dance before you married Arthur.” 

“Oh, I only waltzed — that’s not the kind of danc- 
ing I mean.” 

“Let me suggest to you, Martha, that you have 
not seen the Senorita Alphonsine. It would be fair 
to postpone a decision.” 

“Harry, I shall not believe it any more than I 


The Show Girl 159 

believed the story of the married woman for whom 
you fought a duel.” 

“That’s kind of you, Martha. A woman who 
does not believe a story about another woman is a 
treasure. She usually knows it is true because she 
has seen it with her own ears ” 

“Eyes, Harry ” 

“Ho, I mean ears. She sees it because she 
hears it.” 

“Are you going to marry this dancer?” 

“Ah, that’s what I don’t know. She also objected 
to Madame Lea, and her ideas about marriage are 
of the East, eastward. It is a subject you do not 
hear much about in a French atelier.” 

“Arthur says that he does not think any French- 
man can be saved — he read somewhere that even 
the married men hardly remember the names of 
their own wives — that is, in the society of which 
you speak.” 

“An embarrassing circumstance. He was once 
in Paris for three days, I think.” 

“Yes, we had cheap tickets, and saw the Louvre 
and the Madeleine ” 

“I wonder he did not bring an accent home — 
'and pay duty on it at Charing Cross.” 

“But he is quite a French scholar, you know. 
He has read Lafontaine, and he says that French 


160 


The Show Girl 


people can never be as religious as we are, because 
the Bible isn’t the same thing when it’s translated.” 

“A fine thought. But tell me, Martha, will you 
be my best woman if I marry Mimi?” 

“Mimi — is that her name?” 

“Yes, and a pretty name, too — don’t you think 
so?” 

“What is the best woman at a wedding, Harry ?” 

“The woman who doesn’t run the bride down. 
Mimi hasn’t a friend in England and hasn’t a rag 
to her back. If she will marry me — and God alone 
knows whether she will or no — I want to see that 
she is all right and wants for nothing.” 

“I’ll do that with pleasure if Arthur will let 
me.” 

“Oh, Arthur be hanged. If this boat continues 
to carry us out to sea, as it is doing, we shall never 
see Arthur again.” 

“But, Harry — oh, my dear cousin, where are we 
going ?” 

“That’s just what I want to know, Martha. 
Apparently we are on the way to the Hook of Hol- 
land. Do you know the Dutchmen? A charming 
people and some fine old cities. 

I spoke at random, but, to tell you the truth, 
Paddy, I never was in such a stew in my life. There 
is a tremendous current running down this narrow 


The Show Girl 


161 


strait, and we had been talking so heedlessly that 
it had carried ns far ont to sea before I had thought 
anything about a course at all. When the danger 
became apparent, we must have been a good mile 
from the shore, drifting apparently toward the south- 
east and carried almost as swiftly as a stick upon 
a river. And, as if this were not enough, what 
should happen but that my right scull, refusing to 
respond to my herculean efforts, broke off short at 
the thowl and left me with but a stump in my hand. 
Then, in truth, the lid was off the casket — then, in- 
deed, I foresaw what was to come, both the peril 
and the folly of it. 

Poor little Martha ! What a face she wore, and 
what a devil of a mess we seemed to be in! We 
had set off late in the afternoon, and it was now 
about the hour of sunset. I looked about me and 
saw a great watery plain glowing toward the west 
with a sheen of melting light; but, cold and grey 
as unburnished silver elsewhere. By here and there, 
a herring boat worked seaward beyond the banks; 
there were steamers upon the horizon, and one 
which had just passed us making northward, as it 
were, to Shields or the Humber. But, of help to 
be had for the crying, I saw positively none. As 
for the town of Lowestoft, it was now but a fringe 
of houses above a shimmering horizon. I could not 


162 


The Show Girl 

even espy the masqueraders upon the beach, though 
there came to us from time to time a murmur of 
distant music, and, as it were, the ghost of a human 
voice. At last we passed away even from these — 
the sun sank; the waters began to beat about us a 
little ominously and the wind to utter a warning. 

Now, Paddy, you may imagine how little I liked 
this situation and how careful I was that my real 
opinion concerning it should be kept from the fright- 
ened little woman at the tiller. A sailor, I suppose, 
would have made light of the whole affair, arguing 
that the set of the tide would change anon and that 
the same boat which was now being carried out to 
sea would presently be carried home again. So plain 
a fact did not occur to me even while I had a pair 
of sculls in my hand; but with one scull overboard 
and no particular use for the other I fear it entered 
but little into my calculations. At the best I hoped 
that some passing ship might pick us up — at the 
worst that we might drift right across in safety and 
take an early boat to Harwich and our homes. But 
the latter was a wild dream, as you may suppose — 
and I had all my work to do to comfort little Martha 
and to applaud her bravery. 

“To begin with,” I put it to her, “we cannot go 
far in these parts and not spy out a herring-boat. 


The Show Girl 163 

The herring is a homely fish, Martha, and will 
naturally suggest Arthur and the fireside.” 

“He will never forgive me,” she said, “never — 
never — you don’t know him, Harry. I shall hear 
of this to my dying day.” 

“Of course you will. He will tell it proudly. 
An idiot of a man broke an oar out at sea and was 
only saved from a watery grave by the pluck and 
the resource of a brave woman — isn’t that what 
Arthur will say?” 

“Think of the scandal in the parish, all the 
tongues that will he wagging — think of that!” 

“It will be finer talk than the Pageant. Please 
write it down Martha, it may come in useful if I 
should perpetrate a book.” 

“Don’t, don’t,” she cried, “don’t say it, Harry. 
I am afraid, horribly afraid.” 

“How, that you are not, or you would not con- 
fess it, Martha. It is I who am in a panic. I 
never was brave in the dark, and this particular kind 
of darkness is my abhorrence. I wonder if I flared 
a box of matches would it be any good, Martha. 
Do you think a fishing smack would understand it ?” 

She made some evasive answer — the poor little 
body, I don’t wonder that the situation scared her. 
There we were out in the gathering darkness, not 
a light in sight save at distant Lowestoft, the wind 


164 


The Show Girl 

blowing cold as a blast from the hills, the sun gone 
down in a cloud, and the sea rising with a mournful 
cry which would have shamed the spirits of desola- 
tion. What to do, how to act even an old sailor 
might have been puzzled to say. My primitive mari- 
time knowledge, obtained upon the yachts at Trou- 
ville, suggested an attempt to keep the head of the 
boat towards the swelling breakers and her bows 
above the crests of the increasing waves. I sat by 
Martha’s side, and, employing the remaining scull 
as a paddle, tried to achieve so desirable an end. 
But not without many a weird evolution which came 
near to costing us our lives. 

To be candid, I was within an ace of drowning 
my cousin’s pretty wife, and that’s the whole truth 
of it. If you would give me ten thousand pounds 
upon the table, I would not again encounter those 
grim hours of helpless battling with monstrous waves 
and increasing winds blowing upon us out of the 
void of the night. 

Such a sense of loneliness and despair I have 
never experienced. We seemed to have left the world 
of men far behind us. Great hollows opened and 
threatened to engulf us. We mounted to crests and 
beheld a grey horizon capped by mountainous clouds 
with the moon struggling to break a golden way amid 


The Show Girl 


165 


them. I knew then that long hours had passed; I 
doubted that we should ever see the shore again. 

And what does a woman do in moments like 
these. Well, if little Martha may speak for her sex, 
she cries a little, laughs for contrast, shivers when 
the cold can no longer he denied, and grows hot with 
hope upon the slightest word of encouragement. 
When I told her that I espied the light of a fishing- 
boat, she put both her arms about my neck and kissed 
me — when I had to admit that it was sailing away 
to the northward she just cried like a child who has 
met with disappointment. Nor was that poor crea- 
ture, her husband, often out of her thoughts. A 
woman’s devotion to the man she has married may 
be diverted by his own follies, hut the right kind of 
woman goes back upon it in the hour of danger. So 
with pretty Martha to-night. She wept not for her- 
self hut for the man’s sorrow — and there I could not 
comfort her at all. 

It would have been nearly four o’clock of the 
morning and full light when the boat they had sent 
out from Lowestoft found us at last. We both got 
wet to the skin going aboard her, and were wrapped 
up in blankets when we arrived at the Vicarage. 
Shall I say that Arthur received us with a tragic 
air ? Nothing of the kind ; he just blubbered like a 
schoolgirl and was down on his marrow-bones — for 


166 


The Show Girl 


which I honoured him — there and then. His demand 
for explanations came afterwards. Those were 
tragic, indeed. “There must he a public account of 
this,” he said. I told him not to be a fool, and he 
retorted by asking me to leave his house. 

“I do not say,” he was good enough to remark, 
“that you can command the elements. Such was 
the power of the men of old. But at least you should 
know better than to leave the beach in full view of 
the people, with my wife as your companion, in so 
mad a folly. For that I shall never forgive you.” 

“Then you won’t continue to say the Lord’s 
prayer,” was my retort — and I left him to think 
upon it. 

But, naturally, I couldn’t stay here, Paddy — so 
where should I go but to Cromer, where “The 
Chimes” are playing. Be sure that the palms of 
these worthies were greased long ago, that the gentle- 
man known as Jack Bendall has bought a new over- 
coat, that the lady at the piano is resplendent in a 
wonderful gown of satin, and that aromatic cigars 
of a Belgian brand are freely smoked by the com- 
pany. 

Mimi is now a queen among them. 

But I am daring to hope that her sovereignty 
will be transferred elsewhere very soon — and that 


The Show Girl 


167 


my daring plan will be rewarded by that success 
which you, my dear Paddy, would be the first to 
wish me. So in high hope find me, 

Your friend, 

Harry Gastonabd. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


[In which we translate a letter from Henry Gaston- 
ard of the Maison du bon Tabac, at Hampstead, 
to Mimi the Simpleton, at Felixstowe.] 

Maison du bon Tabac, Hampstead. 

August 29, 1905. 

Chere Mimi, — Ho you remember when Madem- 
oiselle Marcelle taught us to sing — 

“J’ai du bon tabac dans ma tabatiere, 

J’ai du bon tabac, tu n’en aurais pas ?” 

There is a song ma mie y which others have been sing- 
ing this afternoon in the house which their old com- 
rade Mimi wil not enter. Ah, mes enfants! And 
what shall I say to them? 

Behold the builder, and ask if he be not pun- 
ished enough. So much is admitted by those who 
have climbed upward to this height as you and I, 
ma mie, climbed upward in the old days, by the Villa 
Polichinelle, under the sails of La Galette, to the lit- 
tle house where Gabriel de Math had written im- 
mortality upon the windows and your old friend 
168 


The Show Girl 169 

Desmond Barrymore used to sing you to sleep while 
he painted. 

They came here, Mimi, out of the Paris they 
love, to bring a message from the Butte to this sav- 
age land. But one is missing who should have wel- 
comed them — ah, mes enfants. 

It is not Paris, this new house of the bon Tdbac 
at Hampstead, but you might rub your eyes some- 
times and believe another story. Here, as upon our 
own beloved Butte, there stands the villa with the 
roses twined about it; here is the same tangle of a 
garden that served the Chevalier for his verses; here 
we sip the red wine and sing the songs which Jean 
Bataille taught us. One voice alone is missing. One 
who used to love us will not come to us — and the 
roses droop, and silence falls, and we know that we 
have not forgotten. 

Riches did not build this house, ma mie, nor will 
they support it. We are all poor as in the splendid 
days. If we open a little window and look down 
to the valley, we see the great city, and try to make 
believe that it is the Paris we love. Ah, what a 
cheat is that, and how willingly we consent to say, 
There is the dome of the Invalides, and there St. 
Jacques, and there the frowsy houses of the Mich’. 
Georges Oleander, the pitiful old mendicant, started 
the game and is the busiest to play it — but your old 


170 


The Show Girl 


friend Desmond Barrymore makes one of the con- 
spirators, and he has a little bust of you in clay upon 
the table as I write. 

Not Paris, but to those who will that it shall be 
so, a city of their desires. For what land is not a 
home to us when old friends are about us and there 
is good wine upon the table, and we may eat a Cha- 
teaubriand aux pommes and hear the Chevalier sing- 
ing to us, and laugh at old Georges Oleander when 
he would beg the money for a new debauch to-mor- 
row. Fifty francs may be the sum total of our 
riches — I doubt that it will be more. Each is poorer 
than his neighbour, and proud of the fact. When 
you come to us, ma mie , let your hands be full of 
gold, or we shall starve. Let Mimi be the Queen of 
our Treasury. 

You will find the house without difficulty, for 
your new friends will be aware of its situation when 
you tell them that it is in the Walk at Hampstead 
Heath, near London, and has the verses of Villon — 
though they will not have heard of him — upon the 
fagade. Should you remember our loneliness, take 
an early train to London, enter a chariot, and de- 
mand to be driven here. As I say, your friends will 
direct you — and are you not rich, Mimi? 

This is the message of the Chevalier Honore de 
Villefort: Let Mimi come to us. 


The Show Girl 171 

And this the command of Georges Oleander: 
Let Mimi come to us. 

And this the great hope upon the lips of Des- 
mond Barrymore: Let Mimi come to us. 

And this the prayer of one whose house is empty 
when Mimi is not here. 

Ah, mes enfants, 

Henry Gastonard. 


CHAPTER XX. 


[In which Mimi replies to Monsieur Henry.] 

11, The Parade, Felixstowe. 

Wednesday. 

Ah, cher Monsieur Henry, if I knew how to 
answer you. 

Why should I go to dream a little while if I 
must awake to remember. Ah , mille noms , faut-il 
etre Parisienne. 

There must be roses in the heart if we would 
wear them on the cheek; but in my heart none, Mon- 
sieur Henry; for it has grown empty. 

I hear the Chevalier — but why would he call me 
to that great city of shadows? Does Monsieur Bar- 
rymore laugh at me when he would have me believe 
that he is happy in this England? Shall I think 
well of Monsieur Oleander because he also is de- 
ceived a little while? Here I look all day across 
the sea where they tell me that France is. I am a 
child, but they call me a woman. Ah, mes enfants! 
What pages I have turned in this great book of sor- 
row that none may see my tears fall upon them. 

172 


The Show Girl 


173 


A little while and the sun will shine, and then 
there is the great cold road again and the sad-faced 
people, and we go away, oh, so far away towards the 
dark and the night; and there is no light in the sky 
behind us to tell us where the city is; we hear no 
laughter anywhere; but the end of the world is be- 
yond, and we voyage with shut lips toward it. 

I remember such a journey as this; it was long 
ago when I was so little, that you, Monsieur Henry, 
could have put me in your great big pocket. An old 
woman led me by the hand away from a great warm 
house down to the water and the ships. I remember 
that it was twilight and then night, and that I saw 
my home behind me as a star one sees low down in 
the heavens. And then we came to a hut in the 
wood, and there were ugly men, and I could not 
sleep, and when it was day all that I had known 
went from my mind, and I remembered nothing but 
the lonely road, and the strange faces, and the harsh 
words I heard. You know how far I have journeyed 
since those days. Ah, what palaces we have visited 
together, you and I, Monsieur Henry — and how 
often I have lost you! Can you wonder that I would 
rest — even I? 

I dance still with these English friends, and they 
are very kind to me. The people here say that my 
dancing is wicked; but there are many clergymen, 


174 


The Show Girl 


and they love to say “shockink.” I live in a little 
room where I can watch the sea, and I go out every 
morning, long before the people are up, to float on 
the waves, and look for the ship which will carry me 
back to France. But there is no mermaid here, no 
fairy swims with me; I cannot find the silver shell, 
and I return to my little house to say it will be 
never, that I shall see France no more, that all the 
world has deserted me. 

Shall I make you sad, Monsieur Henry, to tell 
you all these things? If I do, the Chevalier will 
make you laugh, and that will be the recompense. 
Oh, he is droll, the Chevalier. Do you remember 
when he loved Madame la Comtesse de Brianville — 
and would have borrowed twenty francs to marry 
her ? Ah, mes enfants — but those were days ! 

And Monsieur Georges. Yes, I would like to see 
him again, and that great Monsieur Barrymore who 
used to sit me on his knee before he painted my 
picture. 

And they are all in your Maison du bon Tabac, 
and there is Paris below the windows, the Paris you 
love to dream of, and you sing the songs that Jean 
de Bataille made. Ah, mes enfants — if I were 
there! — Your friend, Mimi 


CHAPTER XXL 


[Being a telegram from Henry Gastonard to his 
friend Paddy O’Connell of Glendalough.] 

Have news of the gravest importance. Please 
come to London at once to the Maison du bon Tabac, 
at Hampstead. I count upon you. — Harry Gas- 
tonard. 


175 


CHAPTER XXII. 


[Being the reply from Paddy O’Connell to Henry 
Gastonard’s telegram.] 

Impossible to leave before the next train — am 
catching it. — Paddy. 


176 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


[Paddy O’Connell shares the news with his sister 
Clara.] 


4, The Walk, Hampstead, 

London, H.W. 

September 5th, 1905. 

My dear Clara, — ’Twas a rough crossing I had, 
and it found me by no means unwilling to step from 
the sea to the land. But I’d be no good Irishman 
if I complained of a little rough water between me 
and the Sassenach; and so here I am and, God be 
good to me, in the midst of as wild a company of 
men as ever drank wine out of a flower vase or 
cooked their beef on a spirit stove. And, faith, they 
do drink and eat from the morning until the night, 
and, after that, from night to the morning again — 
as the garden bears witness, for I swear ’tis full 
already of the bottles, and beginning to be heaped 
up at that. 

There was a man at Euston who clapped a false 
bag over my valise and stepped into a cab with it; 
but I saw him just in time, and jumped into the 

177 


178 


The Show Girl 


cab with him. He appeared by no means pleased 
at this; and when the driver asked “Where to?” 
“Why,” says I, “to Scotland Yard.” You should 
have seen the fellow alight, leaving me in possession 
of a machine to steal bags which might well be a 
fortune to me. 

But, Clara, I am to tell you of my visit to Hamp- 
stead, where Harry is — and not of any bags at all — 
which I now proceed to do as well as these hilarious 
folks will let me, and as coherently as the madness 
of it makes possible. You should know that I found 
Harry in a little house on the top of a hill by Lon- 
don, at a place they call Hampstead; a great, big, 
bare heath of a wilderness where the folks go to be 
happy on Sundays, and which is large enough for 
the drunken ones to fall down and sleep convenient. 
This is the famous Hampstead Heath, wherefrom, 
they tell me, you can see the dome of St. Paul’s 
and Westminster Abbey, though little of one or 
the other did I see, but only a great big hole full 
of smoke and the roofs of railway stations, and the 
factory chimneys sticking up above it. 

The house itself is a bit of a place not much 
bigger than a cabin on a bog. Some man, who has 
a wonderful taste for the arts, painted it the colour 
of the great Atlantic Ocean, and there are creepers 
all over the face of it, and some poor little roses 


The Show Girl 


179 


that are pining for the country but will get no 
chance of air yet awhile. As for the interior of the 
place, well, there we have Harry’s wit at work, for 
the rascal has made it as like his little house in Paris 
as money and pains could do; and, as if this were not 
enough, he has invited over a troop of the rogues 
that he used to know, and filled them with good 
red wine until there isn’t a man among them who 
could tell you whether he’s himself or his neighbour. 
But here I get ahead of the story, and that, my dear 
Clara, will never do. 

I arrived at the house about six o’clock of the 
evening. No man could have mistaken the place, 
for a great tri-colored flag was flying out of the 
bedroom window, and a crowd stood before the 
windows to hear the Chevalier Villefort singing the 
French song which has the fine classic chorus — 
“Fifine, elle est doloreuse.” When I knocked at the 
door, loud enough to shake the door off its hinges, 
such a shout went up as should have brought the 
fire engines to the street. And what a rushing to 
the door, what cries of “Entrez — herein — kum een” 
— what hands thrust out to drag me along — what a 
tossing up of my bag — God help the whisky — what 
a pandemonium ! A rat fallen among terriers would 
not have been so shaken to the very roots as your 
poor Paddy. Faith, I think that about forty of 


180 


The Show Girl 

them were sitting on my chest at a time, though it 
proved afterwards that there were but five in the 
house, including the little witch that Greuze should 
have painted, and she was as wild as any of them, 
and as ready for the frolic. 

Well, they pulled me into a room that was con- 
veniently furnished with a piano that had but two 
or three notes to it, and chairs that had no proper 
backs to them; and, seeing that I was hungry and 
famished after the journey, they set a bottle of 
curagoa and a yard of bread before me and bade 
me fall to. 

The place itself was so thick with smoke that I 
was hard put to it to say whether I was looking out 
of the front of my head or the back; and I was in no 
way surprised to hear that they had made a night 
and a day of it, and proposed to double the term. 
As for the men, their clothes would have made the 
fortune of a circus. Harry himself wore a suit of 
travelling checks loud enough to knock down a 
nigger minstrel. The long-whiskered beggar-man, 
Georges Oleander, had an old golfer’s red coat to 
his back and a sea-green waistcoat for its own 
brother; the lady-killer Villefort, a real Frenchman 
as you see them in Paris and a gentleman as well, 
he wore a frock-coat and a rose like a cabbage in 
his buttonhole; while as for the little witch Mimi, 


181 


The Show Girl 

she was dressed in a frock down to her knees and a 
pair of crimson stockings bright enough to light the 
candles. What it all meant — the house, the people, 
the noise — your Paddy knew no more than the 
people in the street. What was worse, no man 
among them seemed able to tell him. 

“Finish your breakfast first,” says Harry — it 
was then about half-past six o’clock of the after- 
noon — “and then we can lay the cloth for dinner. 
I’ve ordered it from the confectioner’s, and we’re 
going to have a real good time. Upon my word, 
Paddy, you were an old brick to come — whatever 
should we have done without you?” 

“Why ?” says I, wondering still more, “and what 
do you propose to do with me ?” 

“Why, to make you sing ‘Finnigan’s Wake’ to 
begin with, and then the next best song you can 
remember. Come, Paddy, no heel-taps — you must 
be thirsty, and I wish we had something else but 
curagoa. They’ve drunk all the wine and I’ve sent 
for some more.” 

“From what I perceive,” says I, “they have 
already drunk what you’ve sent for. Is it a wake 
or a wedding, Harry? You didn’t send for me all 
the way from Ireland to join in a smoking-concert. 
I’ll not believe it at all.” 

He said “Hush,” and, presently, when the others 


182 


The Show Girl 


were fallen to their games again, he took me out 
into the bit of a garden, where there was a fountain 
and a satyr — though the gentleman had a clay pipe 
in his mouth instead of a flute, and someone had 
sketched the picture of a broken bottle just where 
he should have worn his tail. Here we had a 
moment’s privacy, and here I began to get at the 
truth of it. 

“Harry,” asks I, “will ye answer me a plain 
question — what are all these tipsy gentlemen doing 
here, and why have you brought that little lady 
among them?” 

Well, he took me by the arm and began to walk 
me up and down the narrow path. 

“They’re not tipsy,” says he, “they’re just glad, 
Paddy. It’s a long story, my boy, and a good one. 
But I’ll have to tell it you in two minutes.” 

“Ay,” says I, “and it’s the story of the child, 
no doubt.” 

He nodded his head. He’s a fine handsome lad, 
with a wicked wisp of brown curls over his hand- 
some forehead, and two clear blue eyes which should 
go deep into any woman’s heart. And he never 
looked handsomer than he did this night. 

“Her story, of course, Paddy. I have won her 
by a trick, my boy. Don’t say now that I was wrong 


The Show Girl 183 

to go to my cousin’s house, for it was little Martha 
who put the first notion of it into my head.” 

“Did the parson call you out?” 

“No, he called me in lest the neighbours 
should see.” 

“Did he complain of his ship coming home — 
the poor devil of a man?” 

“It was a little awkward, certainly — but it saved 
me, Paddy. I just ran over to Cromer to see Miini, 
and then came on to London to fit up this house. 
What will appeal to her, said I, will be a new Maison 
du bon Tabac.” 

“You’ve plenty of it here. ’T'would take a tele- 
scope to see across the room.” 

He was a little cross with me for interrupting 
him, and, in faith, I was as curious to hear his 
story as he to tell it. So I just held my tongue and 
let him run on freely. 

“I determined if I could,” he said, “to find Mimi 
a little house in London, which would speak to her 
of the old days in Paris and lead her to forget that 
she is among strangers in a strange country. So I 
fitted up this place. You see what kind of a place 
it is, Paddy — just a replica of the old villa on the 
Butte, with the very furniture that we used to 
laugh at there. Then I sent for my friends, and 


184 The Show Girl 

the good fellows came at once. How could they 
keep away?” 

“You paid their fares, Harry?” 

“Yes, and old Georges had an accident with his 
at the Cabaret of the Tete ISToire — so I had to send 
it twice. But they came, Paddy, and we began to 
live the old life just as we lived it at Montmartre 
— and then we wrote to Mimi; we all wrote to her, 
and we sat down and waited for her. My God! if 
you had known what those days of waiting meant 
to me.” 

He was deeply moved, and my heart went out to 
him. I have spoken to you before of his great love 
for this child — and, to be sure, it is an honest man’s 
devotion, full of fine, chivalrous thoughts and so 
utterly unselfish that it must bring him to abject 
poverty by and by. This, however, was not the 
time to speak of it. 

“But she came to you, Harry?” said I; “she 
came to you, man?” 

“God be thanked, she did, Paddy. It was last 
night — these fellows had all gone off to dine in Soho 
at a French cafe no Christian man has ever heard 
of. I was alone in the house — all my spirit had 
gone, for Mimi’s letter seemed to say that she 
would not come. All the prophets of evil whispered 
in my ears and promised me misfortunes while I 


The Show Girl 


185 


waited. I lived half a lifetime of poverty, distress, 
and disappointment — alone in the dark of the garden 
looking down upon the lights of London, and asking 
if they hid Mirni from my sight. You know what 
moods like these can be — how we seem robbed of 
every shred of hope, how we say that good fortune 
will never visit us again — wish almost that our lives 
were lived. That was my case for two long hours — 
oh, my dear Paddy, may I never live such hours 
again.” 

“And then,” says I, “then, my dear Harry, you 
were lifted up to heaven in a jiffy. Elijah didn’t 
beat you at the flying.” 

He laughed like a boy at this, while he squeezed 
my arm as though he would press all the human 
kindness out of me and add it to his own store. 
Trust a man in love to be a miser with his 
sympathies. 

“As true as gold, Paddy,” says he, “she came at 
nine o’clock, just when I had put pistols in the 
balance with laudanum, and was watching the scale. 
I can hear the wheels rolling on the gravel now — 
ah, the roll of the wheels that carry your mistress 
to you, is there any sweeter music in life?” 

“Did she come alone, Harry ?” 

“The man they call Jack Bendall brought her. 
I gave him a ten-pound note for himself and a fiver 


186 


The Show Girl 


each for the others of the company. Of course, I 
didn’t guess at first that Mimi was in the cab, and 
my heart started to beat like a fire-pump. She was 
ill, I said, gone back to France perhaps — or even 
dead. Then, Paddy, I heard her voice! Think of 
that, old boy, I heard her voice!” 

“’Twas what was said in the Dublin Courts last 
week, when Mary Wentworth went for a divorce 
from old Mike. She heard a voice in the parlour — 
a female voice ” 

“Oh, be serious, Paddy, be serious.” 

“The very words the Judge used. Do you mean 
to marry her now you’ve got her here, Harry ?” 

“Am I a rogue, Paddy? I’d have married her 
this morning if the priest would have done it.” 

“The priest — what priest?” 

“Why, the one from the little French church. 
Old Georges went to fetch him, but we’d had so 
much wine that Georges couldn’t explain himself, 
and the priest thought there was someone sick, and 
came immediately. When he got there, it was just 
about half-past five in the morning. The room was 
full of bottles and tobacco-smoke, and Villefort was 
playing ‘All the little sheep and lambs,’ and singing 
it as well. When the good father came in and saw 
Mimi fast asleep in an armchair and the rest of us 


The Show Girl 187 

looking as though we had been boiled in old Bor- 
deaux, he just bolted, Paddy.” 

“Ah,” says I, “it’s astonishing how the ecclesias- 
tical mind revolts at originality. Ye couldn’t call 
him back, Harry?” 

“No, I didn’t try. We’re to have a special 
license now and to be married in the morning. 
Mimi’s sent for her clothes, and I’ve got a frock-coat 
coming over.” 

“Will you live in this place when it’s done?” 

“Ah, that’s what I don’t know. You see, I had 
to catch her by a trick, but I won’t keep her that 
way, for we have our livings to get. That’s a task 
I must set about at once.” 

You were for setting about it two years ago. I 
remember you bought a quire of paper and two nibs, 
and were for writing the History of the Palais Royal. 
You got as far as a sketch of Cardinal Richelieu din- 
ing at the Ritz Hotel, didn’t you?” 

“Yes, Paddy, but it’s a great scheme, and I shall 
finish it some day.” 

“Some day is the Bohemian’s yesterday. He’s 
always going to do great things yesterday. Harry, 
my boy, you’re taking the devil’s own risk; there are 
few men who would countenance you, I suppose.” 

“But you, you, Paddy, you don’t forbid it?” 

‘Tve wished it from the start. It may be the 


188 


The Show Girl 

making of yon — if it isn’t the ruin. I’d sooner see 
you married to this little girl than dangling at a mar- 
ried woman’s apron-strings as you were in Paris. 
Eiches don’t go for much if they can’t do better than 
that for you, Harry.” 

“Oh, but you’re talking of things that have been. 
I don’t want to hear about them — heaven knows, 
there are sad moments enough.” 

“Why sad moments ?” 

“I cannot tell you. It’s just obstinacy. Some- 
times I tell myself that even if I marry Mimi, I 
shall not keep her with me. I’m afraid of her own 
past, afraid of my own future. Consider what gipsy 
lives we have led. How are we to go on living 
them, how am I to hope that she will settle down to 
the hum-drum things of a suburban existence ? And, 
of course, I dare not take her back to Paris* you 
know how foolish that would be.” 

“Put the thought out of your head. You would 
be a madman to play with it. As for keeping her — 
well, a man who cannot keep a woman who loves 
him isn’t worth his salt. I’ll not hear it. You have 
no right to be talking like this — not to-night anyway. 
Begin to speak of dark things when the sun is set- 
ting on your happiness. You can keep it above the 
horizon as J oshua did if you set out to slaughter the 


The Show Girl 189 

heathen who are the masters of your idleness. Work, 
Harry — that’s the best friend in a man’s home.” 

He did not answer me; in truth, he had no 
chance. The dinner made its appearance, and we 
all sat down to it — such a merry company that must 
have recalled all the days of the old Kit Kat Club, 
and of the wild dogs that frequented the same. For 
you must know, Clara, that this Hampstead place 
has seen the poets Keats and Leigh Hunt, who was 
another writing man, and Charles Dickens, to say 
nothing of the prize-fighters who had their training 
quarters in these parts, as Harry told me over the 
dinner-table; and I’ll warrant there has been many 
such a carouse as we held this night, and with reasons 
not half so good. Meat and drink, song and dance — 
the men breaking up the chairs and tables; all sorts 
of music, wine enough to float a man of war, French 
ways and manners of it — ay, a night and a morning, 
too, for the bride fell fast asleep in the arm-chair 
just when the sun came up, and there were three of 
us on the benches in the garden when they cried the 
milk in the streets. Nor will I write this to our 
shame. We were children of the highway for the 
nonce. God knows, there is too much of brick and 
mortar in the world. 

You may ask me, Clara, how I, a decent man in 
my own country, and respected in County Wicklow 


190 


The Show Girl 

— as any clergyman who plays golf will bear wit- 
ness — how I can encourage this tipsy life or give 
moral support to my old friend, Henry Gastonard, 
when he is the victim of it. I’ll tell you in a word. 
He will go to the devil if he does not marry this lit- 
tle witch, and the way he has set out to marry her 
is the only one by which his journey’s end can be 
reached. 

Think of the child’s life — she who danced in the 
booths about Paris, she who has been a fortune 
hunter — God help her! — almost since she was old 
enough to lisp any words at all. Would such a 
pretty waif and stray go to a man who had red plush 
breeches about him and solid silver on his table? 
Would she enter a house of double doors with a 
marble staircase beyond? Never, I’ll swear, to her 
life’s end. He has won her through her heart, and 
worthily won her too. 

They were married this morning at ten o’clock 
at the French Consulate, and afterwards by the man 
that keeps the Registry. The rest of us were half 
asleep, but we kept it up to the end, and when we 
left them at ten o’clock of the night and they were 
alone together in the house, we stood by the window 
a moment to watch him kiss her very tenderly before 
we went down the hill to the pit where London lies. 
She is now his wife — God bless her pretty face! — 


The Show Girl 


191 


though what their future is to be, whether a fair 
way in a garden of roses or all the sorrow of the 
children of Alsatia is more than any man may dare 
to say — let alone your affectionate brother, 

Paddy. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


[In which Henry Gastonard keeps his promise to 

Martha Warrington.] 

4, The Walk, Hampstead, N.W., 
September 21st, 1905. 

Dear Martha, — I have owed you a letter for a 
long time, but really, my dear cousin, a man whose 
honeymoon is but a fortnight old has little time to 
think of the sun — and his days are brief enough. 

I was sorry to hear that Arthur considers my 
marriage a “mere scramble on to the banks after 
a wild plunge into the voitex of sin.” I hope he 
was not eating new bread and butter when he 
uttered this masterpiece. Marriage, I remember, 
was not made much of by St. Paul, and Arthur 
used to be a Pauline until he met you. What he is 
now I have not yet discovered. You, who have 
broken the box of sweet spices at his feet, are right 
to complain of the holes in his socks — but as a 
married man I have no sympathy with you. 

This is dreadful news, too, about your hair. 
These new dyes are troublesome tenants, and do 
192 


The Show Girl 


193 


not take our hair upon a repairing lease. It really 
was very noble of you to dye it so bright a red for 
the sake of the Pageant. And now, you say that the 
dye won’t come out, and that you must return to 
Beldon still wearing the brand of Boadicea. Cheer 
up, Martha. Have not some of the noblest women 
in history — chief amongst them our Elizabeth of 
blessed memory — dressed auburn locks for posterity 
and gloried in their possessions? For my part, had 
I known of the fact when writing my skit, “The 
People of the Pageant,” I would have mentioned it 
to your lasting honour. The little book appears to 
be getting about — I had no idea that such a trifle 
could interest so many. 

But concerning more serious things. I am liv- 
ing, as you wished me to live, in a box of a cottage 
upon Hampstead Heath. The place is pretty 
enough, and now that we are married I am putting 
some comfort into it. This is only to be done 
secretly and by stealth. Chairs, which were not 
there yesternight, are discovered at breakfast 
time. A new piano dropped from the heavens, so 
to speak, and has notes that play. I have bought a 
splendid brass bed, and the men rigged it up while 
Mimi was out shopping. She suspects me, but says 
little. I have not told her in the very word that I 


194 


The Show Girl 


am poor; but I have led her to that belief, and her 
devotion is the consequence. 

Would it be foolish to tell you, Martha, that I 
am not wholly happy in spite of all this? The 
vaguest fears afflict me. I know not from day to 
day what evil is to overtake me, and yet I am 
conscious of evil. Perchance it is but the after- 
math of golden days, lived in a sunshine I had 
never hoped to see. Perhaps it is but a lover’s 
humour — I cannot say, and yet it is as real as any 
thought that ever dwelt with me. 

You must know that old Paddy O'Connell, the 
wild Irishman with the thunderous voice and the jet 
black locks and the magnificent figure, remains, 
good friend that he is, in London to “see me through 
it,” whatever that may mean. He is lodged at the 
Jack Straw Castle Inn, on the very summit of the 
Heath here, and he is with us the best part of the 
day, and often the best part of the night. As Mimi 
refuses (because of my poverty) to engage a servant, 
and is at once housekeeper, cook and general servant 
to the establishment, I welcome Paddy as valet in 
ordinary, and do not refuse him. At the brushing 
of a coat or the carrying of a coal-hod he is im- 
mense; while his choice of wines and cigars is not 
to be questioned. For the rest, he has a new 
scheme of money-making ready for me every day. 


The Show Girl 195 

His last was as wild as his first — it would do cousin 
Arthur good to hear of it. 

Paddy thought he had discovered a new furnace 
and retort for the making of gas. He wished to 
put a thousand into the thing and for me to work 
it in his interest. The invention, it appears, was 
run by a sharp American, who had the machine set 
up in a mews near Baker-street, and invited us there 
to witness his experiments. I went by appointment, 
and, of course, Paddy accompanied me. Apparently, 
the inventor made gas out of anything you like. He 
had a small furnace and a retort with a meter 
attached. I don’t know much about the business, 
but I have a pair of eyes in my head, and I used 
them carefully while we witnessed the first experi- 
ments. Certainly they were wonderful. The in- 
ventor lighted a fire with a little bundle of sticks 
and then put all sorts of things into the furnace — 
bits of paper, bits of cloth, rubbish from dust-bins; 
and all the time the meter showed that gas was 
being made. He declared to us on his word of 
honour that he could make gas “out of dead cats” 
if he chose. I went away puzzled, but Paddy was 
enchanted. 

“See here,” says he, “is it a fortune to ye or is 
it not?” 


196 


The Show Girl 

“My dear Paddy,” said I, “fortunes do not come 
quite so kindly — I want to think a bit.” 

“Think be hanged !” says he, “ ’tis thinking ye 
have been for five years or more. Will ye starve* or 
make gas ?” 

“Gas,” said I, “does not generally starve, Paddy. 
There’s a lot of it about in London.” 

“To the devil with it, Harry. Will ye take the 
man’s offer or leave it ?” 

“I’ll tell you to-morrow, Paddy, when we have 
seen him again.” 

He was very angry at this, and would not come 
to lunch with me. Of course, I told Mimi all about 
it, and asked her opinion. She knows less about gas 
than I do; but she has a wonderful little head of 
her own, and her wisdom often puts me to shame. 

“People cannot make gas out of rubbish, Harry. 
I am sure of it. Did you light the fire yourself, or 
did he?” 

“Oh, he did, Mimi.” 

“Very well; take some wood to-morrow and offer 
to light it for him.” 

I told her that I would do so, and we changed 
the subject with a laugh. She had made a wonder- 
ful omelet, but had put sugar instead of salt into 
it, and I had to confess that a savoury omelet made 
with sugar was a delicacy to captivate the heart of 


The Show Girl 


197 


Brillat Savarin. The afternoon we spent in the 
lanes on our bicycles, and at night a mollified Paddy 
came to dine with us and made no reference to 
the gas, though I observed that he took but a moder- 
ate quantity of that commodity with his whisky. 

Ten o’ clock had been the hour fixed for our 
second visit to Baker-street, and we were there, 
as the Americans say, on time. I don’t know 
whether the inventor took the matter as already 
settled, but he wore a fine frock-coat and had a 
pretty white rose in his buttonhole. The usual 
preliminaries being over, he told me that he pro- 
posed to make gas out of a box of child’s bricks, an 
old volume of illustrated newspapers, and a woman’s 
discarded shawl. I listened patiently, and did not 
interfere until the moment he was about to light 
the fire; when I stepped forward and produced the 
bundle of sticks with which Mimi had provided me. 

“Look here,” said I, “if you expect me to put 
any money into this, I must light the fire to-day.” 

Well, Martha, if a thunderbolt had hit him the 
man could not have looked more surprised. And 
yet his sang-froid did not desert him; he pretended 
to acquiesce with the best of good grace. 

“It is immaterial to me,” he said; “you will find 
the furnace a little damp — so many queer things 


198 


The Show Girl 

get into it. By all means try, and I will get a pair 
of bellows to help you.” 

He was out of the room in a jiffy, and we heard 
him running down the stairs. For my part I made 
no attempt whatever to light his fire. 

“Paddy,” said I, “he will return with those bel- 
lows on the kalends of March. I’ll give you fifty 
pounds if he comes back to-day.” 

Paddy would not hear of it. 

“What!” cried he, “d’ye mean to say we have 
met with a swindler?” 

“Undoubtedly, and a very impudent one.” 

“I’ll never believe it. Ye do the man an in- 
justice; ’tis a lie, I say!” 

“Very well, Paddy; send out for some lunch and 
the morning newspapers. We can soon prove it one 
way or the other.” 

Poor man, he was in a fearful state, for there 
is no more trusting soul in all Ireland to-day than 
Paddy O’Connell. I need not tell you, Martha, that 
the man never came back. The secret of his furnace 
was the secret of the bundle of sticks with which 
he lighted his fire. These were chemically prepared, 
and generated the gas which caused the meter to 
register. 

And so, alas, poor Paddy! There was no more 
sorrowful man in Hampstead than my good friend 


199 


The Show Girl 

that night. If he made no actual reference to the 
evanescent subject of gas, I observed that he took 
plain water with his whisky and uttered certain pious 
aphorisms concerning the wickedness of this world 
in general and of its merchants in particular. Forty- 
eight hours afterwards he had another scheme pre- 
pared. I am to set up in London as an art con- 
noisseur — to advise the dealers concerning old pic- 
tures and the public concerning new ones. This, 
he says, will bring me a decent income, at any rate, 
and assure me the friendship of millionaires. 

“And who knows,” he asks me triumphantly, 
“that one of ’em won’t take a fancy to you and 
make you a partner in his affairs? ’Tis a thing that 
has happened, and not so wonderful. Ye have Mimi 
to keep, and ye may have the children. Will ye 
be sitting idle while she starves, Harry? Shame on 
ye for the thought.” 

To which I can make no response, Martha. Idle- 
ness has caught me in its iron grip, and I am spell- 
bound. The sunny days pass so swiftly. There is a 
crown of tousled hair upon my pillow when I wake; 
I see the one face in all the world that should be 
there when I go to my sleep at night. Mimi herself 
appears to live in a kind of wonderland. Sometimes 
she dreams through long spells of silence; there are 
other hours when the old life stirs in her blood and 


200 


The Show Girl 

all the riot and merriment of the Butte must claim 
her. Again and again I have spoken to her of her 
childhood, but can awaken no new memories. A 
wood, and a lonely road, and a woman’s terrible 
face — such are her impressions. To speak of them 
is to recall those phantoms of fear which have 
haunted me from the beginning and are not un- 
known to her. I repeat that they may be the crea- 
tions of happiness itself, for what is left for me to 
desire but this possession of all that I have sought — 
this peace which passe th understanding? 

Convey, I beg of you, to cousin Arthur such 
impressions of my affection as will suit his mood. 
His sermon on the “Damnable Errors of Modern- 
ism” I should have thought a little advanced for 
the simple fisherfolk at Lowestoft. As for the holi- 
day-makers, they must be hard put to it sometimes 
to discover something new — so I suppose they went 
in. The main thing is, did you play to capacity; I 
mean, in ordinary parlance, had you a good col- 
lection? 

It would be cruel to hear that the damnable 
heresies aforesaid were assessed by Lowestoft at a 
sum of seven-and-six sterling — the amount in the 
plate upon, the last occasion when it was put before 
— Your affectionate Cousin, 

IIahey. 


CHAPTER XXV. 


[Containing certain instructions to M. Jules Ear- 
man, ex-agent of police at 4 (bis), Rue du Quatre 
Septembre, Paris.] 

4, Tbe Walk, Hampstead, London, H.W. 

September 28th, 1905. 

Dear Monsieur Farman, — Tbe inquiries set up 
for me by tbe French Consul, of which I spoke to 
you in a recent letter, appear to have been without 
fruit. I am, therefore, craving your kind services 
once more in my interest and begging your diligence. 

It is known to you that I have married Madem- 
oiselle Mimi, who cost us so pretty an adventure at 
Rainey together; but the circumstance of my mar- 
riage and my wife’s own solicitude make it more nec- 
essary than ever that I should be put in possession 
of all the facts which inquiry and patience may dis- 
close concerning her birth and parentage. I know 
no one in Paris to whom I would as soon commit my 
interests as to you, and I hereby beg of you to accept 
the service and to spare no expense to further it. 
From what the Consul has been so good as to tell me, 
201 


202 


The Show Girl 


your inquiries will be best pursued in the neighbour- 
hood of Orleans, and especially at the house of the 
old woman Marie, if she be still living and capable 
of answering any questions at all. 

There is another circumstance — so shadowy that 
I mention it with hesitation, but so full of remote 
possibility that I have no right to withhold it. Tor 
some days now, I have had the idea that this little 
house of mine in London is being watched. Pos- 
sibly my fears are altogether groundless. We have 
led an eccentric life in this place and have carried 
here some of the habits and practices with which 
Paris made us familiar. These may have provoked 
the curiosity of the neighbours or of others who have 
heard of them by rumour. Be that as it may, my 
wife has been much alarmed upon more than one oc- 
casion, and I am not without my fears that we are 
upon the threshold of a greater mystery than any 
which has yet attended her adventurous life. 

I may add that there is just one man in Paris 
who, in my wife’s judgment, should have been 
sought out by us before but has escaped our observa- 
tion and eluded our reckoning. He is a burly ruf- 
fian who frequents the old Cafe of the Assassins, 
and he is often to be found there nowadays. They 
know him by the name of Jean-le-Mont, a title by 
which you will readily discover him. 


The Show Girl 


203 


I commend this man to your notice as one who 
might be able to help you. Meanwhile, accept the 
assurance of my profound consideration. — And per- 
mit me to remain, 

Yours very faithfully, 

Henry Gastonard. 

I enclose a draft for a hundred pounds. You are 
to draw upon me immediately for any further sums 
you may require. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


[Madame Mimi writes a letter to Paddy O’Connell.] 

The Hotel Metropole, Brighton, 
Sunday. 

Dear Great Big Monsieur Paddy, — I cannot very 
much write the English as now, but I shall have to 
say to you what is not proper. Why do you tell me 
the untrue things about my husband — that he is the 
poor man and no more shall have any of the moneys? 
Is it, Monsieur Paddy, because the men always think 
they are good when they tell the untruth to the 
lady? But I know, and I am angry, very angry 
with you. You shall never tell me untrue things 
again — jamais de. ma vie . 

I would tell you that we have gone away from 
the Hampstead to the border of the sea. If Harry 
had not the moneys he could not have led me here 
in the big motor-car — so big, Monsieur Paddy, that 
we could have put you in it as well. And we have 
come to the hotel, and I am so frightened of the 
people and I think I shall run away. But Harry 
says no — and I remain, for I could not be, oh, not 
204 


The Show Girl 


205 


for a little single hour, away from the place where 
mon mari dwells. So I stay, but am very sad — dear 
friend, if you would understand how sad I am! 

Why do the men come to my house and watch 
me ? I do not say to my husband half the things I 
know, for that shall make him afraid also. Is it, 
Monsieur Paddy, that someone hates me for being 
his wife? Shall you think that Madame Lea sends 
the men? She is not the woman who may forget 
him — how well I remember it, and how often I tell 
it by myself when no one is in the apartment with 
me. She will not forget — that clever, wicked 
Madame Lea who love all the men for moneys but 
not any at all for the love. 

It was because I have been afraid that my hus- 
band brought me to the border of the sea. W e have 
put on all our clothes and are very beautiful. I 
must not sing as I walk to and fro, and if the music 
makes me want to dance I must hold myself down 
upon my banc. All the afternoons the monde goes 
up and down in a carriage — such gros monsieurs 
with fur round their necks, and the English lady 
who is so sad and makes her shoulders bare before 
she sits down to dinner. 

I like the sun and I like the sea — the great big 
wild sea, where across so far is my beloved France. 
I am very happy with my husband, but, oh, so much 


206 


The Show Girl 

afraid, that I wake in the night and lay my head 
upon his breast and cry myself because he is there 
and I am his wife. Ah, Monsieur Paddy, how un- 
happy to be no one — never to have known that you 
were a little child and that you had a home. I am 
that, and I am ashamed because it has been so — 
that I am not as the others, and that my husband 
shall never be proud of me because of what I was 
when I left my father’s house. 

Will you not write to me, my dear Monsieur 
Paddy, and tell me how wrong I am? Do not re- 
fuse Mimi the Simpleton. She is very simple still, 
dear Monsieur Paddy, and she have no right to 
believe that her happiness is not the dream which 
will pass away. 

Why did you go from us to your desert country? 
Why did you leave us? It was not kind, Monsieur 
— and you have been our friend. All the others is 
gone away — the Chevalier, the wicked Monsieur 
Oleander, the kind Monsieur Barrymore. They 
have taken my husband’s money and gone away — ah, 
quel drole du monde! 

Mais vous, — Well, I shall forgive you, for you 
will come back to me. And you will write the 
letter to say that I am wicked and that I must not 
be afraid. And please to tell me that it is not 


The Show Girl 207 

Madame Lea, and that my husband will never see 
her — never as long as we both shall live. 

Your devoted, 

Mimi Gastonard. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


[Paddy O’Connell replies to Mimi’s letter.] 

The Headland Hotel, Portrush, Ireland, 
October 2nd, 1905. 

Dear Mimi, — Your pretty letter came to me in 
confidence, my dear, or I would have answered you 
with a telegram. Though, to be sure, what a man 
puts in a telegram is private enough, neither he nor 
anyone else being able to made head nor tail of it 
sometimes. What I wanted to say to you was just 
this — that you are a foolish little girl to write to 
me as you did, though there’s no one I’d sooner 
hear from, and no one whose letters I’d be readier 
to answer. 

What’s all this nonsense about the men that 
watch you, Mimi? Don’t the men always watch a 
pretty woman anyway? I’ll not flatter you at all, 
but if it’s the watching that you’re after, come over 
to this golfing country, and you shall have five and 
fifty men on the first tee to see you off, and as 
many of the women behind them to declare you’d 
be pretty if it wasn’t for your “faytures. 7 ’ So have 
208 


The Show Girl 


209 


done with your nonsense! Pll be writing Harry 
this very day and giving him a word of my mind 
about all that you tell me. He’s made strange 
friends in his days of seedtime, and they’re above 
the ground now at the harvest. That’s the way we 
men have ’em, my dear. We sow friendships in 
our youth and often enough reap thistles in our 
old age. 

Harry was wise to take you away, and I hope 
he’ll keep you in the same place. There’s nothing 
like change, though precious little of that same 
comes the way of Paddy O’Connell. To me the 
world is all the same, my dear — just a great grass 
field with a lot of sand-pits therein, and your Paddy 
in one of them for a certainty. 

What d’ye think the fellows here had the impu- 
dence to do this morning? Why, to follow me and 
old Colonel Willis when we were playing a round of 
the golf. He’s a very wicked habit of using bad 
language, which I have no mind to be listening to, 
and when I saw a crowd about the first tee, I asked 
them what they supposed they had come out to see. 
And what do you think they answered me ? “ Why,” 
says one of them, “we haven’t come here to see — 
we’ve come here to listen.” Be hanged to their 
impudence. 

There’s one point in your letter which I haven’t 


210 


The Show Girl 

spoken of, Mimi, and I speak of it now unwillingly. 
’Twould be about the Lea woman. Be sure that 
Harry will see no more of ber. I say it, and Paddy 
O’Connell makes no mistakes in a matter of this 
kind. He’s done with her — he wished to be done 
with her a year ago, but she wouldn’t let him. And 
ask yourself this, my dear — when a man has got the 
woman he wants, is he likely to want the woman he 
hasn’t got? Think no more of it, I say. Be off with 
him to all the places where there’s music to be heard 
and bright people to be seen, and let me hear of the 
brave little girl I used to know in Paris, and will 
never forget. 

So here’s my love to you wrapped up in a bit of 
a letter and posted in the great Irish country. ’Tis 
no great spirit I’m writing in, but you’d never 
understand all the trouble that comes to a man who’s 
taking three on the greens where he ought to take 
two, and can never hold a hand at the cards without 
somebody insulting him. To the devil with them 
all! They put two aces of hearts in the pack of 
cards I played Bridge with last night, and me not 
discovering it until the second rubber. Would ye 
wonder that I walked out of the window and banged 
it after me. 

I write to Harry by this post. If he shouldn’t 


The Show Girl 211 

show you the letter, don’t pretend to know what’s 
in it. 

But it’s wisdom, my dear, and that’s a rare com- 
modity in these days. — God bless you — and, 

Paddy O’Connell. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 


[The Same Author addresses Henry Gastonard at 
the Hotel Metropole, Brighton.] 

The Headland Hotel, Portrush, Ireland, 
October 2nd, 1905. 

Dear Harry, — What’s all this now about your 
trouble at home and the men that are looking after 
you ? Is it dreams, or is spirits about ? I hear from 
your angel of a wife that some nonsense has come 
into both your heads. And I haven’t the patience 
to hear it — so there’s the truth. 

How, you have got to be up and doing, and act- 
ing the man’s part. Remember, you have made as 
odd a marriage — but as wise a one — as any man that 
ever put a ring in his waistcoat pocket, and couldn’t 
find it there when the parson asked him. Mimi is a 
little wild animal that you took from the prairie — as 
soft as silk, as gentle to your hand; but, man, with 
the blood of the prairie in her veins. Remember this 
every day you get up from her side — she’s the 
daughter of savages, and her birthright will cry out 
for a hearing sometimes. 


212 


The Show Girl 


213 


What are all these fears of hers? Are they not 
the alarm of the gazelle which sniffs a lion on the 
sky line, and would be moving? What are the mad 
outbreaks you speak of — the frenzied desire for 
change and movement? Are they not born of the 
same impulse which sends a wild pony scampering 
through the forest and keeps him at it until he’s ex- 
hausted ? Be very patient with her. The man who 
would keep a wild bird well should not begrudge the 
money he spends for a decent cage — and a large one 
to boot. 

To be plain with you, Harry, I’d be less troubled 
about your good little wife if I had a better story to 
tell of her husband. You say that you are planning 
a scheme which will surprise me presently. Did you 
ever hear tell of the South Sea Bubble where a 
rogue made a fortune by advertising a business 
“presently to be disclosed?” Paddy O’Connell is not 
the one to be putting his hopes for you in any com- 
pany like that. Be up and doing; do you realise that 
in a few months you’ll have no more than a bank 
clerk, and with a power of spending which would 
shame the Jam of Rorypore ? 

Did I tell you that I had a letter from America 
which gave me some concern for a few days? A 
fellow wrote me that he had discovered a gold mine, 
and, being an old friend of my father’s, had put me 


214 The Show Girl 

down at the beginning for fifty shares. “These,” 
says the man, “are now worth about a thousand 
apiece, and there is gold hanked against your name 
in New York to that amount.” All that I had to 
do was to send him a cheque for five hundred and 
forty pounds, the unpaid call on the shares. Bedad, 
Td have done it but for McCarthy, the solicitor, 
who’s the finest nose in Ireland for scenting out a 
“do,” and was on the rat before he’d got half way 
out of his hole. 

“Why,” says he, “this is the gold brick over 
again.” 

“What brick?” asks I, astonished. 

“The gold brick,” says he; “if you go out there, 
he’ll show you a lump of gold as big as a Kerry flint, 
and there’ll be lead inside of the same.” 

“You’ve no trust in humanity,” says I — and 
“Devil a bit,” says he — so I’m keeping my money, 
though I’ve heard of a little scheme for shipping 
Irish horses to the gold-fields of Alaska, which should 
be worth something if worked by honest men. Ay, 
and that’s the rub. Henry, my boy, where do the 
honest men hide themselves these days? I’d sooner 
look for an old ball in a bunker full of stones than 
try to find one of the same. 

You must be coming to Ireland and bringing 
Mimi with you. We’ll show her the wild man’s 


The Show Girl 215 

country together, and, perhaps, be teaching her the 
golf. ’Tis true that neither of us can play, but, my 
dear boy, the best teachers in the world are those 
who know nothing themselves, as you’ll observe both 
in the realms of art and literature, to say nothing 
of those of sport. Bring the child over and let’s 
cheer her up awhile. I’ll warrant there’ll be men 
enough to watch her; but she won’t be afraid of 
them, devil a bit. — Your friend, as ever, 

Paddy. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


[Henry Gastonard makes an urgent appeal to Jules 
Farman, of the Rue du Quatre Septembre, 
Paris.] 

4, The Walk, Hampstead, 
October 11th, 1905. 

Dear M. Farman, — Your response to my urgent 
telegram that you should leave Paris and come to 
me immediately, brings the reply that you cannot 
leave until to-morrow. I am therefore writing you 
this letter with what composure I can in the face 
of this dreadful event, that you may be in possession 
of all the facts before you leave Paris, and able to 
deal with them there, if they are of service to you. 

It was at nine o’clock last Sunday night that I 
first discovered the crime which had been committed 
in my house. I had been absent, perhaps the best 
part of an hour, making a call upon a friend who de- 
sired to consult me upon a French picture he pur- 
chased recently. We returned from Brighton upon 
the previous afternoon, my wife apparently having 
overcome those hallucinations which have troubled 


216 


The Show Girl 


217 


her for some weeks past, and being quite reconciled 
to the prospect of a continued residence at Hamp- 
stead. She was in no way unhappy at the thought of 
being alone, nor did I have any scruples about leav- 
ing her. My suspicions were first awakened when I 
discovered that my friend had not written to me at 
all, and that the letter which I received from him 
was a clever but undoubted forgery. 

You may imagine with what haste I went back 
to Hampstead. I had left my wife at the piano in 
the sitting-room, where, the weather being chilly, 
a bright fire burned; but I perceived immediately 
I approached the house that it was in darkness, al- 
though a glimmer upon the blind still spoke of the 
firelight. This alarmed me greatly. I tried to open 
the front door with my latchkey, but found that the 
bolt had been slipped. A loud knock and ring ob- 
tained no answer. I was now seriously alarmed, as 
you may suppose, and being determined to obtain 
instant admittance to the house, I smashed the large 
pane of glass in the sitting-room, and entered with- 
out further delay. 

I have told you that I left my wife in this room, 
seated at the piano in the further corner near the 
French window by which you pass out to the garden. 
That she had been called away without warding was 
proved by the fact that one of the candles still gut- 


218 


The Show Girl 


tered in its socket, though too faintly to give any 
light, and that the sheet of music lay upon the floor, 
indicating that she had been turning the very page 
when the summons came to her. Save for the fact 
that the fire burned low and that the electric light 
was switched off, there was nothing else in this place 
to excite suspicion. I called my wife loudly by name, 
going to the window and hoping to find her in the 
garden. She did not answer me. I returned to the 
hall, and immediately discovered the body of the 
man. 

Some of the newspapers, I remember, say that 
he was a Spaniard. I should pronounce him nothing 
of the kind, but one of your own countrymen who 
had lived long in the South. When I found him 
he was quite dead, and had fallen forward upon a 
wicker seat at the foot of the stairs. To this, perhaps, 
he had staggered after the blow was struck. I could 
not at the first detect any mark upon his body, nor 
did I wish to believe that he was dead; but, running 
out into the street to give the alarm, I sent one of 
my neighbours for the police, another for a doctor. 
The latter told us the worst immediately. The man 
had been struck down by a heavy implement; his 
skull had been fractured, and he was dead. 

It is not my intention, in such a letter as this, 
to dwell upon my own state of mind at such a mo- 


The Show Girl 


219 


ment, or to relate to you the trivial incidents of such 
a momentous hour. My wife’s disappearance, the 
evidence of a conflict in the hall, the wild tales told 
by the neighbours, were but the first fruits of a 
tragedy which paralysed my faculties. To all their 
questions I could give only the vaguest answers. I 
told them that I knew nothing of the wretched man 
who had been struck down in my house; I could give 
them no clue as to the purpose of his visit. I had 
never seen him before, did not know him, could not 
imagine any business which should bring him to my 
house. 

To the police I confessed Madame Muni’s story 
of men who watched her and of vague fears which 
had haunted her. They pressed me for particulars 
more minute, and I could not answer them. Nor did 
I perceive their drift then as I perceive it now. They 
believe, incredible as the supposition is, that the 
murdered man had been one of my wife’s lovers in 
Paris, that he visited her secretly, and that for some 
reason at present undisclosed she has murdered him. 

I must tell you the plain truth: I can keep 
nothing from you. London speaks of little else than 
this appalling crime; nor am I sure that the voice 
of popular opinion does not agree with the cruel as- 
sumptions of those officially in charge of this case. 

I have, my dear Farman, been associated with 


220 


The Show Girl 

you in much that concerns my private life, and al- 
ways in the cause of one dear to me and to whom my 
happiness is for ever linked. You will imagine my 
situation this day in England. I am alone in my 
house, and there is a hue and cry in the streets for 
the woman I love more than anything on earth. I 
can say nothing to which the world will listen in 
her defence. My letter to the newspapers is printed 
by some, by others withheld as indiscreet. The 
police themselves but repeat a parrot’s tale — “The 
man came to the house; he was my wife’s lover; he 
was killed by her, aided, it may be, by some of the 
disreputable friends she knew in Paris and who are 
now hiding her for their own ends.” 

Admit, my friend, the preposterous nature of 
this assumption. You have known the child that 
the Butte called Mimi La Godiche. Is not her whole 
story a refutation of this calumny most base? Did 
she not guard her virtue in a circle where the very 
name of virtue has long been forgotten? Were not 
her gentleness, her charity, her forbearance the won- 
der even of the outcasts among whom she was 
thrown? And this child is now charged with a lover 
and with his murder! Oh, monstrous, I say! most 
monstrous and damnable, as I will presently prove 
to them. 

In a common way, I have now no right to speak 


The Show Girl 


221 


of fortune; but I have been saving of my resources, 
and still possess a few thousand pounds of my own, 
every penny of which goes to’ the purpose of my 
wife’s vindication. If others fail, I will find her. 
If these vigilant police cannot track her down, I will 
do so, going by night and day to my task until the 
truth is known and justice accomplished. Be you my 
friend in this, I beg of you. By all that is of old 
association and friendship, stand by me now and 
bring your magnificent resources to my aid. 

I should tell you that the murdered man was ap- 
parently forty years of age, small of stature, with a 
trimmed black beard and a wealth of black hair 
slightly speckled with grey. He was very well 
dressed, apparently a man of the world — but there 
is nothing on the body to tell us who he was nor any 
clue as yet to his identity. Gross to London, I beg 
of you, and help us to identify him. Our work will 
begin when that is done ; it cannot begin before. 

So I repeat, come without delay to a man whose 
friends stand apart from him but whose faith is 
unshaken. 


Henry Gastonard. 


CHAPTER XXX. 


[Jules Farman sends to Henry Gastonard some ac- 
count of his stewardship.] 

The Inn, Hampstead, 

October 16th, 1905. 

Dear Sir, — I am sending this by a trusty hand to 
the New Travellers’ Club in Piccadilly as your es- 
teemed instructions command me. 

I have to-day viewed the body of the murdered 
man and am glad to tell you that I was immediately 
able to identify him. He is the Count d ? Antoine, 
who had an apartment in the Rue Boissiers at Paris, 
and is far from being unknown to our best society. 

I had the honour to be employed by the Count 
some three years ago upon a mission whose particulars 
do not concern us. He was of an old family of the 
Antoines, of Picardy, a well-known shot and horse- 
man, and by no means an idle member of the Jockey 
Club. During recent years his fortunes have been 
at a low ebb, but he made friendships which served 
him well, particularly that of the Marquis de Saint 
222 


The Show Girl 223 

Faur, who will be desolated to hear this grievous 
news. 

I will say at once that I am utterly unable to 
imagine any cause of association between Madame 
Gastonard and this poor gentleman. He was not a 
frequenter of the artistic world; had, to my knowl- 
edge, no interest in books and pictures; had set foot 
in Montmartre perhaps twice in the whole course of 
his life. This I am able to tell you because I found 
it necessary to go into the details of his career some- 
what closely when I had the honour to act for him. 

I am compelled, Monsieur, to address you very 
plainly, and to speak at this moment as I would hesi- 
tate to do at any other. The assumption upon the 
part of the police in London that Count Antoine 
had been at one time the lover of Madame Gastonard 
is not supported by any evidence, and is to me en- 
tirely incredible. I shall refuse to give serious con- 
sideration to such a supposition until I am compelled 
to do so by testimony I cannot refuse. And I would 
beg you not to bestow upon it a second thought. 

We are therefore confronted by this perplexing 
fact: That a man, distinguished in French society, 
but knowing nothing of London, goes over to Eng- 
land to see a lady of whom he had no previous knowl- 
edge; that he visits her in a remote quarter of the 
city when she is alone; that he is followed there by 


224 


The Show Girl 

others and murdered in her very presence. To this 
there can be but one explanation. The Count 
d’ Antoine was the instrument of some secret em- 
bassy; he desired to see Madame alone; but his pur- 
pose was known to others, who followed him, and de- 
feated it at the last moment. Let us analyse the 
more material evidence for this. 

And first, the desire to see Madame alone. Is 
it possible to believe that the Count’s arrival at the 
moment of your absence could have been coinci- 
dence — especially when your own habits are remem- 
bered, and the rare occasions when you quit your 
house after nightfall? More probable in every way 
is the assumption that he had watched the house for 
some days, waited patiently for his opportunity, and 
availed himself immediately of your absence. 

Hone the less, the fact is significant — for this 
is done, observe, not by a low fellow, possibly a 
blackmailer or a beggar, but by a French gentleman 
of position, one justly esteemed for his honourable 
actions, and quite incapable of any dishonour in this 
purpose. Here our difiiculties begin; but here also 
I think that we begin to see the light. 

Of this it will be time enough to speak when 
that light shines a little brighter, and is strong 
enough to lead us to some surer ground. My duty 
at the moment is to place the evidence before you 


225 


The Show Girl 

in its simplest form, and to deduce therefrom such an 
hypothesis as may he both reasonably possible and 
no less serviceable to us. And here I ask you to 
observe that the Count d’ Antoine would not have 
approached Madame as he did unless the disclosure 
which he had to make must be embarrassing to her 
or to others. The alternative is the assumption that 
he was her lover — an alternative so grotesque that 
I do not permit it so much as to appear in my reck- 
oning. 

No, Monsieur; the case is not one of those ele- 
mentary studies of human folly or of human passion, 
with which the police of France are so often called 
upon to deal. It is the story of a man who carried 
a secret from France to London, who was followed 
thither by others who shared that secret with him, 
and determined either to prevent its disclosure or 
themselves to profit by it. Such unknown men shad- 
owed the Count — it is possible that they watched the 
house as he watched it, and were themselves about to 
do what he would have done but for this tragic inter- 
ruption. The question remains: "Was their object 
that of blackmail, or did they act for some unknown 
persons who had determined to guard at any cost 
this imagined secret? 

It is true, Monsieur, that the crime itself gives 
no clue to such a study of intention. At the first 


226 


The Show Girl 

blush I might argue that the disappearance of 
Madame, who, I do not doubt, has been forcibly ab- 
ducted from your house, points to the fact that black- 
mail is the issue; but we are not to forget that an 
alternative presents itself, and that these men having 
committed this crime, must for very safety’s sake 
also silence the solitary witness of it. So they ab- 
duct Madame, and hold her as a hostage either until 
they gain a place of safety or have purchased her 
silence in another way. 

Of these alternatives, it is my sincere hope that 
the former approximates to the fruth rather than 
to the latter. Men whose one desire is gain will re- 
sort to extreme measures reluctantly. I should fear 
less from the avowed criminals of Paris, who have 
a precious secret to sell, than from others whose 
projects may be more daring. Such evidence as I 
can collect helps me to the belief that it is with the 
criminals of Paris that I have to deal. 

Permit me to recapitulate this evidence as briefly 
as may be. 

And firstly, that of your neighbour, Captain 
Esmond, the officer of Marine who witnessed the 
Count’s arrival at your house. This he declares to 
have been within ten minutes of your departure — 
so proving that the Count was aware of your ab- 


The Show Girl 227 

sence and desired immediately to avail himself of 
an unexpected opportunity. 

Secondly, the evidence of the cabman Williams, 
who testifies that a small covered motor-car waited 
the third part of an hour or more at the comer of the 
street near by the great house, Bell Moor, and passed 
him later on near Swiss Cottage station, going at a 
great pace in the direction of Regent’s Park. 

Thirdly, the evidence of the boy, Harry Carter, 
who spoke to the driver of the car and obtained an 
answer — he believes in the French tongue, but is un- 
able to say; so ignorant of any other tongue is he. 

Fourthly, the evidence of the servant girl, Cecily 
Rayner, who declares that she saw a man climbing 
over the garden wall of Ho. 4 about the hour of this 
crime, and that she mentioned the matter to her 
mistress, who immediately went out to the garden 
but discovered the house to be in darkness and heard 
no sound of any kind. 

This, Monsieur, is our evidence. To me the con- 
clusions are very natural: 

1 — That the Count was murdered almost imme- 
diately he entered your house. 

2 — That the assassin entered by the way of the 
garden, passed through your sitting-room, and struck 
the unhappy man while he was actually in conver- 
sation with Madame. 


228 


The Show Girl 


3 — That this crime was so swift, so brutal, and 
so remorseless that your wife fell in a faint — and so 
lying was carried immediately to> the carriage with- 
out being able to offer any resistance whatever. 

4 — That the assassin was either in the service 
of the Count, or so situated as to be in possession of 
his plans and intentions, and thus able to forestall 
them. 

Such, Monsieur, is the result of the work I have 
had the honour to do for you. I confess with regret 
that we have dug but a poor foundation, and that 
the corner-stone of our house is yet to be laid. This 
task must be accomplished not in London but in 
Paris. I leave to-night by the boat train from Char- 
ing Cross and beg you to accompany me. 

✓ For in Paris alone, Monsieur, shall we discover 
why the Count d’ Antoine visited Madame Gaston- 
ard, and what was the secret, so precious to him and 
to others, which he could disclose to her alone. 

I have the honour to be, Monsieur, 

Your obedient servant, 

Jules Henry Farman. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


[Henry Gastonard sends Paddy O’Connell some 

account of Lis labours in Paris.] 

Hotel St. Paul, Paris, 
October 19 th, 1905. 

Hear Paddy, — Your letter speaks of a good heart 
and a true friendship. In your own words, God 
bless you for it. 

I cannot tell you what I have suffered during 
these terrible days. There are few to whom I would 
speak of it. Sometimes I wish to God that I could 
wake no more. The world moves about me as a 
rushing sea of which I am afraid. I fear for my 
very reason. 

Consider it all and bear with me. I was the hap- 
piest man in Europe before this trouble came. Noth- 
ing in life but Mimi mattered then. Oh, Paddy, 
if I could tell you what it was to have her always with 
me — to wake each day and find her head upon my 
pillow, to sleep with her white arms about my neck. 
None of us knew her a little bit in the old days. But, 
Paddy, I learned to know her; I learned the truth 
229 


230 


The Show Girl 

which few men learn — the secret was mine — the 
sweetness of it past belief. 

And to say she is gone from me! If she were 
dead, the bitterness of the trnth could not be more 
poignant. I think of every city as her prison; I 
pass no house in Paris that I do not say, If Mimi 
were there! A thousand suppositions of life and 
death torment me every day. Does she know what 
I suffer ? Is it not possible that she will send a mes- 
sage to me? Day answers nothing — the nights are 
silent. I can but wait and pray. 

You say that you arrived in London upon the 
morning after my departure. I do not ask you to 
come to me in Paris, because I know not whether 
Paris will be my home to-morrow, or some other 
city to which destiny may lead me. Be sure that 
I am prepared for anything. I work with Jules Par- 
man literally from the rising of the sun until mid- 
night. We have visited more dens in Paris than I 
would have numbered for all the slums of France. 
And we know no more than the meanest servant of 
the police, who writes his theories in five folios, 
where my wife is hidden, or what this stupendous 
mystery may be. 

You will have read my letter in the English 
papers, and I have little to add to it to-day. It was 
my purpose to remove the cowardly suspicions which 


The Show Girl 


231 


hover about the name of one of the purest of women, 
and this I believe that I have done. Is it not mon- 
strous to see how ready the world is to doubt a 
woman’s honour, how willing to anticipate her guilt. 
Ho reason governs the tongue of scandal, nor does 
justice curb it. Here was a pretty French girl — she 
is immoral, says slander. A man visits her — a man 
she has never seen before' — he is her lover, says the 
multitude. He is foully murdered in her house — 
she must be the murderess. An English police, 
never clever when any gift of subtlety is demanded, 
will accept no story but the one which ministers to 
its love of the commonplace. A French police, 
readier to look further afield, still believes that the 
Count was Mimi’s lover. And I am alone against 
these. My love can but speak in a voice which the 
clamour of conviction would drown. Ah, Paddy, if 
I could but call these slanderers one by one before 
me; could compel them to answer me; could wring 
a cry of justice from their throats. For I alone 
knew what Mimi was, and alone I must defend her. 

I have told you that we visited many of the dens 
upon the further side of the Butte. Our reward is 
some story of the disappearance of the notorious 
ruffian, Jean-le-Mont, and of his aforetime accom- 
plice Bar-le-Duc the apache. This was learned at 
the old Cafe des Assassins when we visited it the 


232 


The Show Girl 


second time. If we risked much, you will believe 
bow little any thought of personal danger deterred 
us. Indeed, I do truly believe that a ruffian there 
was within an ace of drawing a pistol upon, us both — 
but Farman is the master of such men as these, and 
I am never afraid in his company. 

I should tell you that it was mid-day when we 
visited the Cafe and found no one in charge but a 
very pretty and very ragged little French girl sitting 
before a charcoal stove in the outer room. She knew 
Jules Farman well, and asked him pointedly why he 
came there a second time in as many days. When 
he answered her evasively she ran away to tell some- 
one else, who proved to be a dirty and unwashed 
ruffian., by name Rogers — for he was an English- 
man long known to the English police and well 
watched by the French. This fellow was already 
drunk — a bottle of spirits stood by the side of his 
filthy bed; a revolver lay close to his hand. Had 
he been sober, there would have been civility 
enough; but in his mad state he flourished his pistol 
wildly upon our entrance and would have shot us for 
a word. In the end Farman frightened him thor- 
oughly, and he told us somewhat abjectly to follow 
the giant Jean-le-Mont and to put our questions to 
him. 

It is possible that this is a clue; it may be mere 


233 


The Show Girl 

coincidence. You will not have forgotten my letter 
to you in which I told you of the robbery at the 
Quat-Z-Arts ball, of Mimi’s recovery of my gold 
cigarette-case from this very ruffian, and of his sub- 
sequent threats against her. But I find it hard to 
believe that a monster, whose one ambition of the 
day is to steal money for his drink to-morrow should 
remember so pitiful an incident, much less the name 
of one of the thousand friendless girls who haunt the 
Butte and its vicinity. 

In this Jules Barman agrees with me — but he 
asks the pertinent question, Is it not possible that 
this fellow may be the agent of others unknown, and 
that all he has done has been done for money which 
comes to him from this undiscovered source ? I hope 
that it may be so. The police of London are search- 
ing Soho and other haunts of Frenchmen for any 
news of him — the police here are not less diligent. 

You will not be angry with me, Paddy, for 
speaking of another matter, and one of which you 
will hear with little pleasure. Yesterday I had a 
letter from Lea d’Alengon inviting me to her house, 
and assuring me that Monsieur le Capitaine was 
heartily ashamed of his treatment of me. There has 
been, I understand, something resembling a recon- 
ciliation between the pair, though God knows how 
long a woman will be content to be the amiable com- 


234 


The Show Girl 


panion of a man who prefers to go to bed at eleven 
o’clock at night and considers a dinner at Armenon- 
ville as the first instalment of his purgatory. I shall 
not go to her house, be sure — nor could I contem- 
plate such an infamy as any renewal of this ac- 
quaintanceship would imply. None the less, I am 
troubled — for she speaks in a postscript of her 
ability to help me, and declares that my happiness 
may depend upon a prompt response to her invita- 
tion. 

You say that you are in London awaiting my 
return. I can give you no definite news of this, but 
I could wish it rather sooner than later. Every- 
thing here reminds me of Mimi and the happy days. 
I visited the old Maison du bon Tabac the other day 
and spent an hour in its empty rooms. Not a scrawl 
upon its shabby walls, not a broken pane in its win- 
dows but spoke to me of my little wife and the 
golden days which are no more. And just as it is 
tumbling into decay, so, Paddy, is the house of my 
own life falling. I see the great city of Paris below 
me — it speaks of eternal things and of the darkness 
which is eternal. The green woods rise beyond, and 
I remember that they gave me Mimi in the days of 
the springtime, even as their falling leaves may hide 
her to-day from my sight. 

All that is here, the voice once musical of Paris, 


The Show Girl 


235 


the glare of her lights, the rolling traffic in the 
streets, the unceasing business of pleasure — all 
this has no meaning for me. I pass by as a man 
who has no place in such a pageant, who must walk 
apart until the end. Even the memory of the golden 
days has become an evil thing. I shut the old pic- 
tures from my eyes, but they rise up to mock me. 
Ah, Paddy, the day is dark indeed, when a man’s 
youth stands to him for an evil memory, and he 
would blot the yesterday of life from the book he 
has written. 

Write to me often, old friend. Remember how 
very much I am alone. If circumstances seem to 
promise a continued stay here, I will beg you to 
come to me. Meanwhile, find me, as always, dear 
Paddy, 

Your friend, 

Harry Gastonard. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


[In which Paddy O’Connell advised his friend 

Harry to pay a visit.] 

Jack Straw’s Castle, Hampstead. 

October 21st, 1905. 

Dear Harry, — I have no telegram from you 
this morning, and am remaining here. Be good 
enough to wire upon receipt of this to say if you 
would sooner have me in Paris or London — for ’tis 
little I care where, so long as I may be of service 
to you. 

Your letter to the daily papers has done a 
power of good. I had no idea that any friend of 
mine could write with so much feeling and good 
sense, and I congratulate you upon it. The town, I 
am told, continues to talk of little else — but you 
have given the affair a new turn, and the newspaper 
editors have more than they can do with the letters 
that come to them. 

How, my boy, I am going to speak very plainly 
to you. Had you asked me a month ago whether 
you should go to Madame Lea’s house, I would have 

236 


The Show Girl 


237 


turned my back upon you for the question, and put 
it out of your power to ask me another for many a 
long day. 

But this is not my advice this morning. There 
is something lying at the back of my head which may 
be common sense or may be a fool’s burden; but it 
is crying to me all the time that a woman may be 
the heart of this mystery, and to a woman you may 
well go for that news which no man is able to give 
you. 

I say, go to this Lea d’Alengon and hear what she 
has to tell you. When your dear wife is found, ’twill 
be Paddy O’Connell who will make his advice good 
and relieve you of the burden of it. Go to her, and 
ask her plainly what is the meaning of the postscript 
to her letter. She’ll tell you in five minutes. There 
never yet was a woman born who could keep good or 
bad news from the man who meant to have it from 
her. 

I shall say no more, lest I should put thoughts 
into your mind and inspire you with a hope that has 
no justification in the facts. One thing I do ask you 
to believe, and it is this: that if your wife is alive 
and well, and I believe her to be both, we shall have 
a message from her before many days have run. ’Tis 
a poor sort of a house which can keep a clever woman 
from speaking out of its windows when she has the 


238 


The Show Girl 

mind to be eloquent — and Mimi is no singing bird 
to be content with a spoonful of canary seed. We 
shall hear from her, I say, and the news will be good 
news. So go to visit Madame with a light heart — 
and be sure you carry yourself well before her — 
for a woman tells little to a coward, and this lady 
may have much to tell. 

I would have you to know that your cousin Mar- 
tha stands with me in this opinion, and is all for 
your going to Madame Lea. “’T'is a woman’s story,” 
says she, “and a woman must tell it.” I find the 
little body mightily concerned about the whole busi- 
ness, and as full of ideas as a pod of peas. She has 
been to Hampstead almost every day since I was 
here, and we have ransacked your home together 
for the clues we did not discover. A livelier com- 
panion I would never wish to find, and, being Ar- 
thur’s wife, I forgive her much — even her calling 
me a fool for wanting to put an advertisement in the 
papers advising Mimi that you are in Paris. 

As for Cousin Arthur, there’s a man that has 
found some heart at last. I’ll do him the justice to 
believe that his sympathy is gratis, and not a return 
for the seven thousand a year of your money which 
he hopes to get in the springtime, and thereafter to 
preach the Sermon on the Mount from the neigh- 
bourhood of Park-lane. I have here by me, as I 


The Show Girl 


239 


write, a copy of Taylor’s “Holy Living” and a new 
edition of Smiles’ “Self Help,” which he has just sent 
down to you. There is also a slip of texts under- 
lined, with which I take leave not to trouble you. 
It is well meant, and it would be sinful for us to 
mock him because he wears a Roman collar and is a 
little less human than the rest of us. 

Don’t fail to let me have the news. The best 
part of my own is told by the newspapers before I 
can breathe a word of it. They have made a profit- 
able business of this mystery, and there is not a 
drawing-room, a club, or a kitchen which does not 
discuss it every day and all the days. For you, 
yourself, I find the warmest sympathy — and it is pos- 
sible that you have already done something to earn 
the same for your dear wife. God bless her, wher- 
ever she is, and send her back to us before our hearts 
are broken. — Your friend, 

Paddy O’Conxell. 

P. S. — I have just sent a telegram to an editor 
man asking him what the devil he means by an article 
in his paper this morning suggesting that Mimi is 
shielding somebody, and that’s why the police cannot 
trace her. It is necessary to be discreet and patient, 
but if he doesn’t contradict it to-morrow, I’ll go down 
and break every bone in his body, just to show my 
good opinion of him. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 


[The Reverend Arthur Warrington thanks Paddy 
0 ; Connell for services rendered.] 

The Red Farm, Beldon, Suffolk, 

Eve of the E'east of St. Raphael. 
Dear Mr. O’Connell, — I am much obliged by 
your letter and packages containing the little books 
you were unfortunately unable to deliver to my 
poor cousin. I thank you also for your friendliness 
towards Mrs. Warrington during her mission or char- 
ity to the great Metropolis. 

That there is no further news concerning this 
unhappy affair distresses me greatly. The wages of 
sin are dreadful indeed; leading, it would appear, be- 
yond the promises of Holy Writ to these awful mys- 
teries this twentieth century brings before us. I 
have no doubt that poor Harry meant well when he 
married this girl; but I cannot forget that he was not 
blessed by Holy Church, and that he is now reaping 
the fruit of his indifference. 

A home broken up, this dreadful suspicion hover- 
ing about his poor wife’s name — oh, my, dear sir, 
240 


The Show Girl 


241 


what moral lessons do not these things convey. Let 
us offer him what consolation we can, remembering 
with the poet Shakespeare that — murder, though it 
have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous 
organ. 

I pray God that these assassins will be brought 
to justice speedily. — And am, with renewed thanks, 
my dear sir, 

Yours faithfully, 

Arthur Warrington. 

P.S. — Would you be good enough to remind Mrs. 
Warrington, who in her distress may have overlooked 
so trifling a detail of the domestic curriculum, that 
the patterns of the chintz did not reach me from 
Smallgroves, and that she would do well to see the 
people about it while she is in London? 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 


[Henry Gastonard tells Paddy O’Connell of his visit 

to Madame Lea.] 

Hotel St. Paul, Paris, 
October 24th, 1905. 

Dear Paddy, — I had called upon Madame Lea 
before your letter reached me. This was done at Jules 
Earman’s request, for, be sure, that which you were 
thinking was not forgotten by a man so able. 

I found Madame alone in a handsome apartment 
in the Avenue Kleber. She is not changed a wit, is 
the same beautiful languorous creature that we knew 
of old time. 

I told you in my last letter that there is some 
talk of a reconciliation between her and her husband. 
This I do not believe, preferring the view that the 
Captain’s affections are temporarily engaged else- 
where. A man who is kind toward his own failings 
generally has some charity to spare for those of his 
wife. Possibly, the man is merely a philosopher — I 
do not make myself his judge. 

It is sufficient to say that Madame received me 
242 


The Show Girl 


243 


with great cordiality, impressed upon me the fact 
that we were alone and bade me open my heart to 
her. If I did not do this, be sure that my attitude 
was by no means irresponsive. I had come to her 
house to learn if Madame Lea had a secret, and, 
learning that, to obtain it from her if that were pos- 
sible. A false word would have ruined all. I 
realised that Mimi’s very life might depend upon 
success or failure; nor was I unaware that my own 
happiness might be won or lost in that very room. 

We begin with a talk that was commonplace 
enough — her health and mine, my departure from 
Paris, the absurdities of our last meeting — and so 
to Mimi and my marriage by a natural sequence 
which diplomacy demanded. I found her eloquent 
immediately when Mimi’s name was mentioned. A 
woman will discuss a man’s love affair readily 
enough; there is no surer passport to his confidence, 
perhaps to his heart. And Lea d’Alengon, you will 
remember, speaks with little fluency upon any other 
subject. 

Imagine, Paddy, a considerable apartment fur- 
nished with all the precarious grace of the Louis 
XV. period — but flauntingly modern and garish in 
its tone. Say that the walls are panelled in silk of a 
deep golden hue; put long mirrors wherever there 
are niches for them; place clocks of many kinds upon 


244 


The Show Girl 


the tables and in the angles — Cupids marking the 
hour of the day; the Hesperides shouldering the 
golden apple; “Father Time treading Gaea beneath 
his giant feet” — all the baubles which are sold in 
the Rue de la Paix, and others which came God 
knows whence. 

The furniture itself was bought, I believe, at the 
last Exhibition. It is fine but new, oh, so new! — 
and Lea’s gown of white and gold brocade is caught 
up by it as a flower of bizarre magnificence suitable 
to so bright a bed. As for Madame, her eyes are as 
black as ever, her hair as splendid — but I think 
the sun has pencilled that pallid face and that the 
years have not forgotten her. Hot until I spoke of 
my marriage did she betray her wonted energy — not 
until that moment did the natural woman reveal 
itself. 

“Why did you not tell me that you were in love 
with the girl when first I saw you ?” she asked. “I 
would have helped you, Henry — is not a woman al- 
ways willing to help a man in love?” 

“That, my dear lady,” said I, “is an abstruse 
speculation. And I am in no mood for argument. 
Do you not know what the papers are saying of my 
wife ?” 

She posed lanquidly and watched me with some 
cunning. 


The Show Girl 


245 


“I am forgetting how to read English/’ she said, 
“and, Henry, you have forgotten how to teach me.” 

This I passed by. Were Lea d’Alen§on upon 
the scaffold, she would open a flirtation with the 
executioner. 

“The news is in your own journals,” I said, “and 
why not ? Does Paris wish to forget one whose pic- 
ture had no second in last year’s Salon ? But I see 
that she does — and, Lea, you know the story as well 
as I do. Let us abandon the preliminaries, God 
knows I have little heart to begin at all.” 

She shivered slightly, I knew not why; and for 
some while her thoughts appeared to be voyaging 
afar. Presently she recollected herself and ad- 
dressed me seriously. 

“Did you know the Count d’ Antoine?” 

“Absolutely, no.” 

“Never met him while you were in Paris?” 

“Never once — but remember my life. The Butte 
knows little of society — if there is any democracy in 
this world, it is that of the atelier and the conserva- 
toire. At the Hotel St. Paul I was merely an Eng- 
lish gentleman seeing Paris. Why should I meet 
the Count d’Antoine ” 

“But your wife ” 

“Would you say that she knew him ?” 

She paused and bit her lip. I could imagine that 


246 


The Show Girl 


her thoughts were travelling again. From this mo- 
ment, I cannot tell yon why, I began to suspect her. 
And, Paddy, remember what suspicion meant to me, 
the hopes and fears of it, the straw upon the stream 
of a woman’s caprice, the light upon the crest, to 
lose which were a torture. 

“Would you say that Mimi knew the Count, 
Lea?” 

She smiled now — a wan smile, not of jest, but of 
her own endeavour to deceive. 

“There were few pretty women whom the Count 
did not know ” 

“Then you were among the number?” 

“I met him twice at the house of the American, 
Madame Martin, and again at the Austrian Embassy. 
A very handsome man, one of those who bewitch 
women with the notion that they have a thousand 
stories, but would never tell them. Oh, yes, I knew 
the Count.” 

“And you believe it possible that Mimi knew 
him?” 

“Everything is possible in Paris — did she not 
frequent the gardens?” 

“It is a lie — she knows the West as a tourist 
from my own country. Her home was on the moun- 
tain.” 

“You say so, Henry — oh, forgive me, I am try- 


The Show Girl 247 

ing to help you. If she did not know the Count, 
why did he go to her house ?” 

“The question I am here to ask you, Lea.” 

“To ask me — : am I a sorceress, Henry ?” 

“In so far as a sorceress is usually cleverer than 
her kind, yes.” 

“Then you think — oh, but it is impossible, it is 
ridiculous.” 

She laughed aloud, forcing herself to the mood 
as an instrument may be forced by cleverness to a 
note of discord foreign to it. I perceived now that 
she had brought me to her house for curiosity’s sake 
— not to tell me what she knew, but to ascertain the 
extent of my own suspicions. The discovery mad- 
dened me. I could have caught her arms, and thrust 
her down, and compelled her to confess. The tor- 
ture she put upon me was as deliberate as the insult 
— and yet I suffered both for Mimi’s sake. 

“It is ridiculous,” she repeated, “the same folly 
which sends a man to a woman when his trouble is 
a woman. I knew the Count; knew him as I have 
told you. Would he speak of every chit the atelier 
or the cabaret discovered for him? It is madness, 
Monsieur Henry. You know that I cannot help 
you.” 

“And yet you invite me to your house?” 

“To offer you my sympathy, my friendship — to 


248 


The Show Girl 


hear yon tell me why yon did this thing; you, who 
could have a thousand friends among your own 
people, to seek one out of the great caravanserai of 
irresponsibles, to prate of her virtue, to fight for her, 
to marry her — is not a woman’s curiosity justly 
provoked ?” 

“And for curiosity’s sake you sent for me to-day 
— pardon me. I shall answer that question for you. 
There was something beyond curiosity, Madame 
d’Alengon, there was fear.” 

She opened her eyes in wild alarm at this. I 
had seen her angry before, but never as she was an- 
gry now. There is something of the tigress in every 
passionate woman — a good deal of it in Lea d’Alen- 
gon. For a moment I could almost contemplate a 
second tragedy — and I do believe, Paddy, had there 
been a weapon to her hand, she would have struck 
me. 

“Fear!” she cried, raising herself upon a frail 
arm, and making no attempt to modulate the shrill 
echo of her alarm. “Of what, then, am I afraid, 
Monsieur Gastonard?” 

“You are afraid of discovery, Madame d’Alen- 
gon.” 

She laid her head back upon the cushions, and 
laughed defiantly. I can give you no better account 
of her speech and actions than to say that they were 


The Show Girl 


249 


those of an enraged woman whose breeding has no 
reserves of self control. A washerwoman complain- 
ing at the tub, a virago at the doors of a tavern had 
not been a spectacle less repulsive. 

“Discovery, Monsieur Gastonard; a precious 
word, discovery! Are you mad? Must I say that 
you have lost your reason? Discovery of whom, of 
what — of the fact that all the world knows, that you 
married a noclambule, and have been whining ever 
since for sympathy; that your Jezebel is as old in 
her vices as she is young in years ; that you were the 
dupe, the victim of the canaille of the Butte — must 
I say this? — or shall I order you from my house; 
call my servants to protect me? Shall I do that, 
Monsieur Gastonard?” 

I kept my temper; the stake was, beyond all be- 
lief, momentous to me. A false step would have 
put me outside her door; and remember how pre- 
mature I had been, how much the unwise agent of 
my own unwarranted impulses. 

“You are very angry with me,” I said; and 
added, “perhaps with reason. Of course, I should 
not have put it in that way, though it is a method 
which others will not hesitate to adopt ” 

She turned at this — quickly, as one alarmed, 
and called to reason by something which hitherto 
had escaped her reasoning. 


250 


The Show Girl 


“Others, Monsieur Gastonard ?” 

• “Certainly — others. There is my friend, Jules 
Farman, of the Secret Police. He knows much that 
neither of us might wish him to know. And please 
do not forget that there are circumstances of this 
crime which have set the whole world by the ears. 
There is not a policeman in Paris or in London who 
will not move heaven and earth to get at the truth. 
So we are all concerned in the matter — and if any- 
one of us has been foolish, said or done something 
which might implicate us, now is the time to set it 
right. I put this to you as a friend. Tell me why 
you sent for me to-day, and if the confession is to 
your disadvantage, I will accept your confidence as 
an atonement.” 

There never was, Paddy, such a wild arrow shot 
in all this world before, and never will be again, I 
do believe. Nothing but a dogged faith in my own 
convictions could have bent such a bow. This woman 
had sent for me; her manner sufficiently declared 
her embarrassment. Unless she had something to 
offer me, my visit must end in her discomfiture. Lea 
d’Alengon is not the woman to bring such an affront 
upon herself. This I perceived, and in my mad de- 
sire for the truth could have knelt at her very feet, 
and implored her to aid me. She knew — the key 
was locked in the safe of her intrigues. My God! 


The Show Girl 251 

What a torture to say as much, and to realise my 
own impotence ! 

Well, the shot was fired, and the target touched. 
She had listened to me with her eyes wide open, and 
her mouth pursed up, as though anger were held at 
hay a little while by reflection. When she spoke, 
her voice had lost its shrill timbre of protest, and 
all its pleasing qualities been regained. 

“We are all foolish sometimes, Monsieur Gas- 
tonard. I was foolish when I counted you among the 
number of my friends. Let us not speak of it. You 
say that I brought you to my house because I know 
something. Very well; I do know something, and 
you shall know it — the dead Count was your wife’s 
lover; that is what I know, Monsieur Gastonard.” 

“It is a lie,” said I. And I leaned back in my 
chair, and watched her critically. “So poor a lie 
that so clever a woman as Madame Lea should not 
have told it.” 

She turned her eyes away from me, and con- 
tinued her infamous story, unabashed and una- 
shamed. 

“It is a lie,” I repeated — but her words held 
me to my chair as though an unknown hand caught 
me by the throat. “Why do you tell me so foolish 
a lie, Madame Lea?” 


252 


The Show Girl 

She rose and came across to me. The spell of 
her mendacity was broken. 

“I tell it because I loved you,” she said. 
“Yes, yes, yes, it is the truth, and no lie. I loved 
you, and you left me for this creature, this canaille , 
this girl of the fetes and the circus. Shall I keep 
the truth from you now ? She murdered the Count 
when he had no more money, and his presence was 
an embarrassment. Do not his friends know it — 
did not the Marquis de Saint Faur shut his door 
upon him for that very reason?” 

“I will ask the Marquis,” said I. But I could 
hardly speak the word for trembling. 

“Yes, yes,” she said, “ask him — but you will 
have far to go, for he is at Corfu, upon his yacht.” 

“I beg your pardon; he returned to Paris last 
night.” 

It was as though I had struck her in the face. 
She stood there as some marble figure of distress, 
motionless, with a fixed and unchanging smile upon 
her lips. 

“The Marquis has returned?” 

“As I say — last night. I am going now to his 
house.” 

I turned upon my heel, and left her. She had 
not moved from the place when I passed out. I 
could see that a word would have unsealed her lips 


The Show Girl 


253 


and cast her, a mendicant for pity, at my feet. But 
I went straight on to the hall and the street, and call- 
ing the first cab which came to my view, I ordered 
the man to drive me to the house of Monsieur le 
Marquis de Saint Faur. 

He was not within — he is to see me to-night. 

Ah, Paddy, If I could hut know what he will 
say — if I could but be sure that this foul lie will 
pass no human lips again! 

The heart has gone out of me — I must watch and 
wait through the long night — 

Your friend, 

Harry Gastonard. 


CHAPTER XXXV . 


[We meet the Marquis de Saint Faur and another 
old friend.] 

Hotel St. Paul, Paris, 
October 25th, 1905. 

Dear Paddy, — I am keeping my promise, and, at 
much inconvenience, hastening to let you know, both 
what was done last night, and what is proposed to 
be done to-day. That you have no news I gather 
from your silence. Had there been but a single ray 
of light, I know with what speed your kindness would 
have winged it on to Paris. An empty letter-bag 
chills my hope with its intimation of despair and 
hopelessness. 

Oh, I cannot get away from it, Paddy — asleep 
or awake, the question rolls in my ears with a sound 
of drums. She is alive — she is dead. A thousand 
arguments push reason and patience aside, now bid- 
ding me accuse, now reproach her — anon chanting an 
office of black conspiracy, again deluding me with 
fair promises. For would not Mimi, of all people 
in the world, have found a way, if any door were 
254 


The Show Girl 


255 


open to her cleverness? What trick, I ask, what 
mendacity keeps her silent ? Has an unknown assas- 
sin dared a second crime, that the first may be cov- 
ered? And why, and why — why did this come to me 
in the springtime of my happiness? What mockery 
of my destiny sent it to my door at such a time? 

I have seen the Marquis de Saint Faur, and he 
has told me that Lea’s story is a black lie. The ar- 
rows of a base calumny rarely stick, Paddy, but they 
prick and bruise, and often leave a scar. I am 
ashamed of having gone to his house, and yet not 
ashamed. His manner perplexed me utterly — we 
make nothing of him, and yet we may not dismiss 
him. Is it not becoming a mystery beyond all hope, 
all thought? 

I am convinced of one thing, and it is this, that 
Lea d’Alengon never intended me to hear the Mar- 
quis’s name. It escaped her lips by accident, at a 
moment of stress, when the lie meant all to her, and 
the man who would deny it was, as she believed, be- 
yond the confines of appeal. An accident of speech, 
a chance word uttered by Jules Parman, informed 
me of St. Paur’s unexpected return to Paris, and 
last night I called upon him at his hotel. 

This was at nine o’clock. Despite the season, the 
famous corridor of the Pitz Hotel showed me many 
familiar faces. I heard the American tongue, with 


256 


The Show Girl 


its shrill suggestion of dominance; passed by no- 
torious “affairs” and discovered the Marquis at last, 
one of four at a little table, and two of them as well 
dressed and elegant women as I have ever seen in 
this famous place. 

The Marquis himself is all that his ancestors 
might have been before the “grand manner” per- 
ished in France. Tall and stately, with a bearing 
dignified beyond words, his bow is not to be matched 
off the boards of the Theatre Frangais; while his 
reception of me was that of a great nobleman who 
has been unwelcomely disturbed but would utter 
no complaint. In his hand he held the card upon 
which I had scribbled the words — “concerning Mon- 
sieur le Comte d’ Antoine.” But I had looked to see 
him in a private room, and my apologies were ex- 
pressed with all the earnestness I could command. 

“Mr. Gastonard,” he asked me, “must this be 
urgent ?” 

“It shall be when Monsieur le Marquis may 
please — but no words will express my gratitude if 
it may be soon.” 

“I have an apartment here,” he went on, “will 
you do me the honour to come at eleven o’clock to- 
night?” 

I said that I would do so, and turned away. He 
had named me aloud, however, and one of the women 


257 


The Show Girl 

— of singular beauty and much sweetness of manner 
— uttered an audible exclamation, and stared, I 
thought, more directly than good manners permitted. 
At the door the porter, who knows me well, told me 
that the Marquis was staying in the house. 

“And the ladies with him ?” I asked. 

“They are the Princess Helene of Hidze and her 
cousin, Monsieur.” 

There was nothing to call for remark here, and 
I went out and paced the boulevards until the ap- 
pointed hour arrived. In the old days, Paddy, noth- 
ing gave me more delight than to walk alone in 
Paris when the lights were blazing and the cafes 
black with people and all the boulevards alive with 
the hum of leisure and frivolity. What a scene un- 
matched, I used to think it; what drolleries one wit- 
nessed; comedies fed upon sugar and water; tragedies 
brooding upon black coffee and a twopenny cigar — 
everywhere the fiddlers thrashing unoffending cat- 
gut; women talking against time — men against their 
sweet persuasiveness — waiters playing the acrobat — 
fat proprietors of restaurants perspiring and beaming 
at their doors — what a scene and what a people! 

And the Jehu on his box and the turbulent sea 
of crashing traffic coming whence God alone knew — • 
the ferocious cries of peaceable men — the glittering 
pavements — the spreading aureoles of monstrous 


258 


The Show Girl 


lights — theatre flares as triumphal arches of shim- 
mering fire — great wide windows to bewitch you 
with their merry revelations — the throat of Paris 
grown hoarse but weary — ah, I say, what scenes and 
what a people! And yet I could pass them by to- 
night without a thought, believe that they mocked 
me, cry upon the happiness and the laughter of 
others, say that the music was discordant, the women 
so many Jezebels, the men a company of chattering 
fools, the whole city a pandemonium whence I would 
willingly escape. So does trouble war upon us, so is 
this land fair or a wilderness, as fortune shall dictate. 

The Marquis was in his room when I returned 
at eleven o’clock. He wore a black smoking-cap and 
had lighted a cigar. You know the rooms upon the 
first floor of the Pitz, little arbours, as it were, cut 
out of those vast walls, but arbours furnished as the 
old chateaux were, and often borrowing the treas- 
ures of chateaux for their ornaments. The apart- 
ment was lighted by a single reading-lamp, placed 
upon a table at the Marquis’s side. Whisky and 
soda and tumblers stood to hand. He was alone and 
I perceived at once that he received me not unwill- 
ingly and with some curiosity. 

“You are here to speak of my poor friend the 
Count d’ Antoine,” he said. “I know your name, 
Mr. Gastonard, and the story of these recent days. 


259 


The Show Girl 

Be good enough to sit down. I regret that I should 
have been compelled to defer the hour of our meet- 
ing, but the reasons were self-evident. There are 
the cigarettes, if you will smoke.” 

He lighted one himself, standing with his back 
towards me, but scanning my face, as I could see, 
in the mirror above the chimney-piece. Fear of my 
own quick tongue bade me imitate him and smoke — 
for there is no weapon of discreet speech so sure 
as a cigarette in the mouth. When he had seated 
himself, I stated my purpose very frankly. 

“Yes,” I said, “it would be about the Count 
d’ Antoine. He was very well known to you, Mar- 
quis — I may say that he was your friend.” 

“Most willingly — one of the oldest of my friends 
and one of the most esteemed.” 

“Then my second question needs no apology. I 
have been told that my wife was his mistress. Is 
that story true or is it false?” 

He did not answer me immediately. Perhaps 
my own pitiful state alarmed him, for I could not 
master my distress. It was there for all the world 
to spy upon — a man’s heart stripped for others to 
revile. 

“Is the story true or false, Monsieur le Marquis? 
Pardon my insistence — your answer means more to 
me than I can tell you.” 


260 


The Show Girl 


Again a little spell of silence, and that impene- 
trable mask upon an immobile face to defy me. Oh, 
my God, why did he not speak? Did honour for- 
bid, or the truth? 

“I understand you very well, Mr. Gastonard,” 
he said at last, “and I think that I may reply as you 
would wish — ” 

“You think, Monsieur?” 

He waved the objection aside a little masterfully. 

“Who can answer for a man’s secrets — much less 
for a woman’s ? I believe that my friend the Count 
had never seen Madame Gastonard until he visited 
her in London.” 

“Thank God for that — thank God!” 

“He had never mentioned her name to me — so 
much I remember perfectly. And I think he would 
have done so if the facts were as you suppose.” 

“I suppose nothing, Marquis. A woman sent 
me here — Madame Lea d’Alengon.” 

‘Madame d’ Alengon — ha !” 

He smiled quietly, but a phase of anger suc- 
ceeded the smile, and upon that a glance of mistrust. 

“Madame d’Alengon — what does she know of my 
poor friend?” 

“She met him at the house of Madame Martin, 
the American. This story of an intrigue reached 
me first from her lips — she sent me to you believ- 


The Show Girl 


261 


ing that you were at Corfu upon your yacht. I had 
learned by accident of your altered plans — and so I 
came to you.” 

He nodded his head, staring down into the blaz- 
ing fire of logs which had been kindled upon my 
entry. 

“You did very well,” he exclaimed, “very well 
to come to me. The Count was more than my 
friend — he was almost a brother to me.” 

“Then you know why he went to England?” 

He did not look up, but his very attitude revealed 
something to me. This was a question he would 
willingly have been spared. 

“I — what should I know of it?” 

“Pardon me — you were intimate friends, and 
the supposition is not illogical. Then you knew 
nothing, Monsieur?” 

“Of what happened, nothing. Had it been 
otherwise, the police would have heard from me the 
same day.” 

“And you hazard nothing, Monsieur le Marquis?” 

He smoked quietly for a little while — but 
answered me eventually by an evasion. 

“Y ou are asking me many questions — may I put 
one or two to you?” 

“ I shall answer everything, Marquis.” 


262 


The Show Girl 

“They will be embarrassing questions, but they 
are not put without a purpose.” 

“That is understood.” 

“You first met Madame Gastonard at one of the 
Fetes about Paris, I think?” 

“At the Fete de Heuilly.” 

“And were attracted by something in her appear- 
ance or manner? Would it be very difficult to tell 
me a little intimately of that, Mr. Gastonard?” 

“By no means. I was attracted firstly by her 
originality, and then by my belief that she was not 
born amongst these people. A Louis Quinze clock is 
beautiful at Fontainebleau, but you pass it quickly 
where there are hundreds like it. In the Hue de 
Pigalle one would remark it immediately. I saw 
that she had not been bom to such an environment. 
Her voice had the timbre of birth. There were 
gestures, phrases, a manner which cried loudly for 
a truer story. I stayed to talk to her, as one might 
rest to pick a rose in a swamp. That was the oddest 
thing, Marquis — the advantage remained with her. 
Ho one to my knowledge has ever patronised Mimi 
the Simpleton.” 

“Why did they give her that name?” 

“I can but surmise. She lived in her dreams 
apart from them. Their world was not her world. 
She walked through it with skirts lifted, upon the 


The Show Girl 


263 


tiptoe of her birthright. To me it always seemed 
that her mind strove ceaselessly to recall something 
which illness or terror had blotted from its recollec- 
tion. She was a born leader of the people — she 
ruled by right of blood — the most ignorant were 
conscious of it.” 

“And she could give you no account of her past?” 

“So meagre an account that its pursuit were 
hopeless. She remembered an old woman named 
Marie, the great white road from Blois to Orleans, 
voices in a wood — and then the Showman’s booth. 
The ‘beforetime’ lay in the golden mists of child- 
hood. She believes that it was a happy time — this 
memory of a burden as of happiness has come 
through the mists and has never been laid down. 
Oh, yes, Mimi was happy in her childhood, I have 
no doubt of it.” 

“You pursued your inquiries none the less, Mr. 
Gastonard?” 

“I have spent thousands of pounds in the 
quest ” 

“And nothing further has been learned?” 

“Nothing has been learned.” 

He nodded his head, and for quite a long while 
said no word. He was standing up when next he 
spoke and he looked me fairly in the face. 


264 


The Show Girl 

“Mr. Gastonard,” lie exclaimed, “I sent the 
Comte &’ Antoine to England.” 

“You, Monsieur!” 

“As I say, I sent him to England, to see Madame 
Gastonard, and, if possible, to persuade her to pay 
a brief visit to Paris.” 

“Monsieur — Monsieur !” 

“For a purpose of an honourable, I will say, in 
fact, of a noble character; but one I cannot reveal 
even to you.” 

“Then you know her story, Marquis?” 

“I believe that I know it — but as belief which 
is not certainty might work an inconceivable mis- 
chief, my lips are sealed.” 

“But — but ” 

My astonishment did not move him. He contin- 
ued in an inflexible tone. 

“I sent the Comte &’ Antoine to England to verify 
certain facts which had come to my knowledge. He 
was murdered in your house; but how or why he 
was murdered you have my word that I do not 
know.” 

“You can imagine no reason — think of no possi- 
ble agent?” 

“Of none, or his name would have been known 
to the police these many days.” 


The Show Girl 265 

“Then I am not to say that the Count’s errand 
concerned others?” 

“By no means could it possibly have concerned 
any human being other than the person who 
prompted it.” 

“Not an errand where money was the issue?” 

“Absolutely not — I can tell you no more; I am 
not permitted to tell you more.” 

“Having told me sufficient to make me the most 
miserable man in Paris! Are we not now become 
conspirators in this, Marquis ? Are not our interests 
common interests?” 

“In a measure, yes — I see that you suffer much.” 

“Marquis,” I said quietly, “I would give half 
the years of my life to see my wife to-night.” 

“A sentiment most honourable. Should it be 
possible for me to further it, count upon my warm 
endeavour.” 

“Meanwhile, you are unable to help me?” 

“I am quite unable, Mr. Gastonard.” 

I did not press the point. Here was a man of 
honour of the old type; my knowledge of such men 
told me that I might question him for a century 
and learn nothing if honour sealed his lips. Perhaps 
some shadow of a wonderful truth already crossed 
my path, but made it the blacker because of these 
events. Of one fact I had no doubt. He was as 


266 


The Show Girl 


ignorant as I of the story of the Count’s death and 
of Mimi’s abduction from my house. 

“I am quite unable to help you at present,” he 
repeated, “and it is very probable that I shall be 
leaving Paris to-morrow upon the voyage of which 
you have heard. Before I go, let me say that you 
have my good wishes, my warmest wishes for your 
success. Good night, Mr. Gastonard; do not hesitate 
to write to me— or to come to me, if that be advis- 
able. And be sure of my interest whatever happens.” 

I thanked him, plainly perceiving that he wished 
to terminate the interview and that any further 
question would be unwelcome to him. It was after 
midnight when I went out to meet a chill night, with 
a drizzle of hostile rain which drove the people from 
the boulevards and sent the loafers to the baser cafes. 
For my part, although there were cabs at the doors 
of the Ritz, I determined to walk to my hotel. So 
many strange thoughts came to me, so many hopes, 
so many fears have been my portion, that I have 
learned to dread the constraint of rooms and turn 
to the liberty of streets and the darkness. Here, 
under God’s sky, be there a heaven of stars or a 
veil of cloud, I may still believe that my little wife 
is looking upward, that her eyes are cleaving the 
night as mine, and that the same prayer which I 
breathe is also upon her lips. 


The Show Girl 267 

Ah, Paddy, will it ever be that I shall wake 
again to find her pillowed head upon my arm, to 
know that I have won her love and will keep it to 
the end? If Paris would but answer me that — the 
mocking crowds, the darkened canopy of night, the 
unknown voices which torment me ! Shall to-mor- 
row be as yesterday and all the morrows after? Oh, 
God forbid ! — I cannot lose her; I will not cease to 
hope that even as she came to me in this city of my 
youth, so shall Paris surrender her now in the hour 
of my need. — Your friend, 

Harry Gastonard. 

I had closed this letter, but must open it again. 
Jules Farman brings me a strange piece of news. 
It may mean much or little. He followed me, it 
seems, to the Ritz last night believing that I also 
had been followed now for some days in Paris. He 
had waited some twenty minutes in the Place Yen- 
dome, when a man passed whom he recognised. 
It was our old friend the famous ruffian Jean-le- 
Mont, from the old Cafe of the Assassins. The man 
lingered a little while outside the Ritz, and then 
went on toward the Boulevards. 

How, what does this mean — what does your wis- 
dom make of it? Jules Farman will say nothing. 
He has been very silent these last few days. Is it 
possible that our first ideas are to be justified? I 


268 


The Show Girl 


begin to believe so, even if the light be dim and the 
path uncertain. Tell me what you think and do 
not fail to write to me. I am very lonely, Paddy. 
There is not a man in all the world so wistful of 
sympathy as your friend Harry to-night. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 


[Paddy (TConnell writes a brief letter from Jack 
Straw’s Castle at Hampstead.] 

Jack Straw’s Castle, Hampstead. 

October 27, 1905. 

Dear Harry, — I’ve no mind to be writing letters 
on a Friday, but as we can’t blot that same day out 
of the week, anyway, and there’s good luck to come 
in this world as well as bad, here goes for a trial of it. 

I am still fixed upon this wild heath, though 
God knows why. You tell me neither to come nor 
to go, so here I am for the middle course, as the car- 
driver said when he put me into the canal for fear of 
spoiling the banks with his wheels. Little Martha I 
see every day, and we’ve had more than one lunch 
and dinner at the foreign cafes down West, on the 
off-chance that we might do some good to you — 
though this is not a matter that should be named 
to her preaching man of a husband. What a poor 
thing he is, to be sure 1 — preaching on a text of St. 
Paul about marriage directly her back is turned, and 
giving it out to the flock that celibacy is the blessed 
269 


270 


The Show Girl 

state ! She’ll give him celibacy when she gets home ! 
Faith, I’d like to be there when his ears are boxed. 

Your letter speaks of no good spirit, my boy, 
and I’m not wondering at it. But you’ll be good 
enough to believe this — that if any harm had hap- 
pened to Mimi, your wife, the news of it would have 
come home to you before this time. She’s well, and 
she’s kept away from you by some villain or the 
other who would profit by her story later on. That’s 
my certain belief, and nothing will shake it. A girl 
as clever as Mimi the Simpleton is not going to stay 
in any cage while her wit can squeeze through the 
bars thereof; and we’ll be hearing from her, with 
any luck, before the year is very much older. 

So I say to you, cheer up. Hope’s a good friend, 
even if he does treat us uncivilly sometimes. Many 
the time, after taking ten in a bunker, have I for- 
sworn the pastime of golf, and resolved, by my fath- 
er’s name, to take to hoeing turnips. But here I am, 
at a sixteen handicap still, and willing to back my 
luck against the company should occasion offer. 

I would tell you that we put the advertisement 
offering your thousand pounds for news of Mimi in 
all the papers, and have had perhaps a thousand 
answers. This London is a funny place, and as many 
rogues as fools in it. Sometimes I think that half 
the world’s gone mad. Is our dear little girl a wild 


The Show Girl 


271 


animal that people should be writing to you as they 
are writing? Every crank with a bee in his bonnet, 
every wide-eyed lunatic who thinks his sister passed 
somebody like Mimi in the streets is spoiling good 
paper and pestering us. And then the newspapers 
themselves, still at it with 1 their theories, and the 
great doctors of learning, and the scholars from the 
colleges, and the lunatics that have escaped out of 
Bedlam, all large in print with their stories of what 
happened, and their advice gratis to the rest of the 
company. ’Tis a very pandemonium of suggestion, 
and not one idea worth a silver threepenny among 
the whole of them. 

Meanwhile, Harry, my boy, will you be letting 
Paddy O’Connell know what he can do for you? 
’Tis no pleasant holiday-time — ten days for eleven 
guineas — that I’m spending in these parts. 

Picture your friend walking on the lonely heath, 
and hunted about by vulgar men in buttons if he 
so much as drives a golf ball into a perambulator. 
This is my occupation — and when I’m tired of it, 
there are the horse-riders to be seen on the tan, and 
the motor-cars, which the police are fining. 

As for the horsemen, we’ve no such riding in Ire- 
land, and wonderful it is to see, especially the elderly 
gentlemen on the six-and-sixpenny nags, who take 
a little horse exercise for the liver’s sake. One of 


272 


The Show Girl 

them fell off by the pond yesterday, and I caught 
his steeplechaser for him. Such a sorry nag never 
came out of a knacker’s yard in Ireland ; but the man 
himself was shivering like a half -drowned dog when 
he came up, and sovereigns would not have per- 
suaded him to mount again. 

“Did ye see that?” he asks me; “did ye see him 
buck?” 

“Why,” says I, “not exactly. But if you’ll get 
up and make him do it again, I’ll tell you what 
it is.” 

He was very angry at this, and wouldn’t hear 
of it. 

“I’m not a jockey,” says he. “Do you suppose 
I’m going to ride a buck-jumper? Wait till I get 
back — I’ll tell Boulder what I think of him !” 

“Just clap your hands,” says I to this, “and the 
old horse will run home by himself. ’Tis a fine 
afternoon for walking, and good for the spirits. I 
would be taking the second hour first next time you 
go out. ’Tis cheaper in the long run.” 

You can see any amount of these fellows on this 
“blasted heath,” Harry, but not much else that I 
know of. And I am staying here because my old 
friend asked that same of me; and, if he wishes it, 
I’ll remain until they wake me and afterwards. As 
for the little house, the curious folk still come to 


273 


The Show Girl 

stare at the place, and Sunday finds them loafing 
about half the day, just as though there were to be 
another bad business for their amusement, and a 
wrong done to them should it not happen. Yester- 
day one of them pushed his nose so far into the gar- 
den that for a halfpenny I would have punched it. 

He turned out to be a French waiter from a little 
hotel in Soho, and had much intelligence of his own; 
so I fell to some agreeable talk with him, and was 
much struck with his remark that the real way to 
get at the truth would be by offering money to one 
of the gang to turn King’s evidence. To be sure, 
we’d have to learn the name of the fellow first — but 
that’s to be done, I am persuaded — and if you would 
hear the Frenchmen for yourself write to Monsieur 
Jean Kabasseur at the Cafe Bousson, Soho. A man 
of some intellect who might be useful to us. 

Meanwhile, for the sake of all that’s charitable, 
either summon me to Paris or send me back to Ire- 
land. Your letters speak of a poor spirit; and if 
there is one man in this land of Sassenachs who could 
cheer you up, ’tis that same rogue Paddy O’Connell. 
So send for me and have done with it. Martha leaves 
London to-morrow, and then I’ll be lonely indeed. 
“I must go back to my dear husband,” says she; and 
when I offered to send for him to London, ’twas just 


274 The Show Girl 

“Heaven forbid, Mr. O’Connell! would you spoil my 
holiday?” 

So you see,, women are much the same all the 
world over; and, if ever I would marry a wife, I’ll 
look her up and down first, and ask myself some 
questions. Is she the kind to go in double harness, 
and how will she run without blinkers? Is it my 
money she’s after, or the beautiful face I see in the 
glass ? Be sure, I’ll be hard to convince. ’Tis rarely 
a husband’s face the women see in that same mirror; 
and lucky for the husbands that they have no gift 
of second sight — all of which goes to the making of 
that incurable old bachelor — Your friend, 

Paddy. 

P.S. — There was a letter came to-day from the 
office of the “Daily Bulletin.” I’m sending it on. 
You’ll see it’s marked “urgent,” so don’t answer it 
until you get it. Meanwhile, the others are going to 
the waste-paper basket, especially the bills, which 
have an ugly look, and should not be left lying about 
any house to annoy a man. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 


[In which we hear of Henry Gastonard at the Pa- 
vilion Henrv Quatre in the town of St. Germain 
by Paris.] 

Pavilion Henry Quatre, St Germain, 

By Paris, 

November 5th, 1905. 

Dear Paddy, — I have very great news for you, 
and I hardly know how to tell it. This must be the 
excuse for my silence these many days. Oh, my 
dear old chap, if you knew what it all meant to me ! 
But I will try to tell you soberly, though God knows 
how much my impatience tempts me to heroics. 

You have been to St. Germain in my motor, 
and will not have forgotten it. Don’t you remember 
that great forest platea-u above the river; how the old 
car groaned to climb the height, and what a lovely 
view we had from the very terrace before the win- 
dows? 

That was in the “witching month of summer.” 
I remember that we set out after a dinner at Ber- 
notti’s, which you thought execrable, and a* supper, 

275 


276 


The Show Girl 


chez Maxim , which won upon your fancy. We were 
a partie carree in the car, and you were not a little 
alarmed lest news of the escapade, and of two young 
and amiable ladies from the Chatelet should ever 
reach the secluded shades of Glendalough. 

Those, my dear Paddy, were the roses of yester- 
year. We gathered them upon the velvet sward 
of youth, the vine leaves in our hair, and the garlands 
of eternal hope about our brows. You, I remember, 
were all for a fortune your uncle was about to leave 
you, and a chateau at Bougival — I for a gold medal 
at the salon and a niche in the eternal temple. Let 
us draw the veil upon such a treacherous jade. Did 
not old John O’Connell leave every shilling to the 
priests — bad cess to him, and is not the very bust 
I then worked upon become a corner-stone in the 
house of my abasement ? 

I am once again at St. Germain, Paddy, and the 
changed season of the year speaks eloquently for me. 
What a rare day of autumn, what a chill, bleak night, 
with a voice to whisper of winter ! Here is the very 
same terrace, magnificent as of yore — that terrace 
upon a glorious height wherefrom you look down 
to the valley of the shining river, away across the 
desolate plain of poplars, whereupon humanity plays 
its Lilliputian role upon a mighty field, and beyond 
which Paris herself is but a blur upon a far horizon. 


The Show Girl 277 

But it is a silent terrace, Paddy, and the “monde” 
has deserted it. No gay music of fiddles now; no 
majesty of womanhood; no rustling silks and float- 
ing chiffon, and “Monsieur” to glance to the right 
of him and to the left of him ere sitting at the table 
of his guilt. Even the “teuf teuf” is silent, and the 
very stables cry desolation to you. The sun gave 
and the sun has taken away; and for want of that 
little sunbeam the chiffoned elves are hidden, and 
the world of laughter has fled the woods. 

But I hear you resenting this philosophy and 
asking for the news. Let an excuse of prolixity be 
that of the day and of the hour. It is Sunday, and 
but two parties at this famous house. I linger here 
because the events of these latter days forbid me to 
tear myself away. Would you have it otherwise as 
the circumstances go? Was it not on Friday that 
Jules Farman came to me, whispered a word in my 
ear that quickened my pulse as wine, and even hinted 
that the end was near? A more reticent man does 
not exist — there is no greater pessimist in all the 
service. And he came to me and told me — he per- 
mitted me to hope — he encouraged me to believe the 
best. Do you wonder that I behaved like a fool for 
three good hours, and did not cease so to behave 
until he threatened to leave me behind and to do 
the work — if work were to be done — himself? 


278 


The Show Girl 

There are some private affairs, Paddy, which 
are better for the wisdom of an old friend’s tongue — 
and this is one of them. I was in a poor way when 
Parman came to me and had begun to say that the 
Marquis de Saint Faur would never reveal what he 
knew of the Count d’ Antoine’s visit to London. 
More than that, I imagined that the purpose of the 
visit could throw no light upon its dreadful sequel. 
Here was a French gentleman, of the older fashion, 
who told me plainly that he kept a secret from me, 
but begged me to believe that his reticence was’ both 
wise and honourable. And I must believe him; I 
must carry the assurance that he knew, and that his 
knowledge must be hidden from me. 

A torture truly — for what burden is so heavy 
to a man in doubt as the silence of another who 
could speak? I perceived that the Marquis would 
never speak; and, driven to the belief that my little 
wife had not left England at all, was upon the point 
of keeping my promise to you when Farman came 
with his amazing story, and all the castles of despair 
were demolished in an instant. 

This was at five o’clock of the afternoon of Fri- 
day. There had been a day of wonderful sunshine 
for the month of November, and many people in the 
streets. I lunched with that pleasant fellow, the 
Chevalier Honore de Villefort, at the Madrid, and 


279 


The Show Girl 

went with him afterwards to the house of the famous 
painter, Delmormet, who has a studio for portraits 
in the Avenue de Malakoff. A promise to Yillefort 
that we would go up to the Butte together to dine, 
and then make a tour of the old cafes, was not ful- 
filled, for I had no sooner come in sight of the Hotel 
St. Paul than I remarked a large motor-car standing 
at the door, and leaped to the conclusion that it had 
come for me. In this I was not mistaken. Jules 
Farman himself waited in my room, and instantly in- 
formed me of the truth. 

“Madame Gastonard is at Bougival — in an old 
house near the river,” he said. 

I looked at him, but did not answer. The room 
and all things in it were spinning before me as a 
gyroscope. The temptation to laugh was almost 
uncontrollable. 

“What do you say, Farman?” 

“That Madame Gastonard is at Bougival, and 
that we must go there immediately.” 

I walked across to the buffet and filled a wine- 
glass with brandy. It was odd to hear my own heart 
beating, odd to be lifted in an instant, as it were, 
upon the wings of light to a very heaven of grati- 
tude and thanksgiving — and yet my prudence saved 
me. Doubt whispered loudly in my ear. I could 
laugh for excitement and yet curse the fate which 


280 


The Show Girl 

made me doubt. Even Jules Earman was powerless 
against that native caution which has saved me so 
many days. 

“Why do you believe this, Farman?” 

“Monsieur,” he said very simply, “the man Jean- 
le-Mont has told us something.” 

“He has told you something — yes — but what? 
Speak, man, for God’s sake ! Is your heart of mar- 
ble that you play with me like this?” 

He seemed astonished. He is officialdom per- 
sonified. What are men and women to him but 
names to be docketed, identities to be established, 
the persons of the drama which can move him to no 
excitements. 

“It is a long story,” he said next, “and we have 
little time. If you are ready, we will go to 
Bougival.” 

I did not answer him immediately. The voice 
of prudence cried to me to make haste. Good God, 
that I should delay, I who would have gone through 
fire and water for Mimi’s sake ! And he reproached 
me, this smooth-faced servant of bureaucracy who 
had done his work so well. 

“I am ready, Earman — let us go,” I said — for 
he delayed now. 

He pointed to my thin overcoat. 


The Show Girl 281 

“Not without our furs, monsieur; the night will 
be cold.” 

The rebuke was just, and I perceived that he 
was heavily clad, though in other respects the same 
reticent, unobtrusive creature we have always 
known. When all was ready, he gave a direction to 
the driver to go to Asnieres — a suburb to the north- 
west of Paris — and taking his seat beside me in the 
tonneau, we made the journey without a single word 
spoken between us. 

And what could I say to him? What treasure 
of my inmost thoughts should I lay bare at such an 
hour? My love? Impossible to speak of that. My 
gratitude? He was well aware of it. The doubts 
lingering, the spectres of incredulity? They sat by 
his side too, for his very reservations betrayed him. 
Enough for me to say, Mimi is at Bougival; I am 
going to her; I shall find her to-night; to-morrow 
she will awake upon my heart. Were we not flying 
towards her? — streets and boulevards devoured us 
with an appetite of distance insatiable; houses and 
shops, cafes and restaurants — so many stars of light 
to guide us; intervals of blackness; bridges above 
and rivers below; trains crashing upon iron girders; 
trams humming toward the city — all the panorama 
of the flight as though shown upon a cloth. And 
afterwards the open country. Streets emaciated; 


282 The Show Girl 

factories at intervals; red blasts of light against a 
black sky; the fresher air of fields and parks; and 
beyond all, one clear star upon an imagined horizon 
— the star of our faith and purpose. 

I have never been more grateful to a motor-car 
in my life, and may never be as grateful again. 
Here was a machine of steel whose soul sent out a 
sympathetic message to my own. “I know, know, 
know,” the voice of it seemed to say. A horse bend- 
ing to the whip could not have answered more 
readily to the fevered cries of a despairing master. 
We covered the ground as upon some magic carpet 
stretched out at my desire. When the flight ended, 
when the voice from the heart of steel was no longer 
heard, I noticed that we stood before a little cafe in 
the narrow street of an inconsiderable town. And 
I was as one awakened from a nightmare of sleep. 
Was she here; was this the house? The omens said, 
no. I glanced at the cafe and perceived two old 
friends standing at its doorway. They were the 
mendicant Georges Oleander and the merry Chev- 
alier Honore de Villefort — whom I had but just 
left in Paris. 

“We are here to dine with the Chevalier,” Par- 
man whispered to me as we descended; “please to 
remember that. We are returning at eleven o’clock. 


The Show Girl 283 

I wish no other suggestion to be made. It is very 
important.” 

I nodded my head to him, and we entered the 
house together. A zeal, burning to a point almost 
beyond endurance, bade me welcome this respite, 
as a man may welcome an inn upon a journey to the 
house of his pleasures. The cafe, I observed, was 
one frequented by the students; a shabby little 
place, with a damp, stained frieze of faded gilt to 
speak of ancient glories. The occupants of it were 
a dozen students, poets, painters, and the riff-raff of 
the schools. Dinner had been set for us in a mock 
cabinet particular — but a sorry imitation of the 
genuine article. Here, anon, we were joined by 
Desmond Barrymore, and immediately he had en- 
tered, the patron himself served up the first course 
of a dinner whose menu might have been in Chi- 
nese, for all I remember of it. 

Imagine my feelings, Paddy, as I sat at this rude 
table with the old friends who have fought so many 
battles — and cracked so many bottles — of Bohemia 
in my company. Hot many months ago, Barrymore 
and I were fighting for little Mimi’s very life in the 
Lapin Agil on the Butte. I left Paris, and he came 
across the sea to witness my marriage. Again a 
few weeks roll on, and he is here as a silent witness 
of my despair. The others, good fellows that they 


284 


The Show Girl 

were, could but act a mean part on such a night. 
Ah, for the old times when no man cared a sou for 
the morrow, and sufficient for the day was the even- 
ing thereof. This thought tempted me sometimes. 
We may well dread a gift of happiness, for shall 
there not be an aftermath of sorrow, whatever our 
fortune ? 

It was not hidden from me that Jules Farman 
had called upon these good comrades of mine to 
share his confidence. They were excited, but not 
eloquent. Recalling old days of the games, I found 
them in that mood which overtakes a man when he 
is about to run or row a race, and believes that he 
will win it. They talked at rare intervals, drank 
much wine, evaded my questions, and rarely looked 
me in the face. 

When dinner was over, we went into the outer 
room and joined the Bohemians there. This I 
understood to be part of the stratagem, and I made 
no comment upon it; and, for that matter, the scene 
was droll enough. The artist — especially the 
French artist — in Suburbia is a wild creature, as 
you know well; nor were these men exceptions. We 
discovered them in all attitudes, some sprawling at 
the tables, some billing and cooing in far secluded 
comers. The man at the piano had a girl upon his 
knees, and cuddled her while he played. The 


285 


The Show Girl 

shadowgraph which they acted presently would have 
brought the police into any establishment in London. 
But here it seemed innocent enough. After all, the 
spirit of the play goes for much. 

Depict a far from clean sheet drawn across one 
end of this mean room, and a shadow-play cast upon 
it. There is a sick man shown, and he is in extremis. 
Appear a doctor, who pulls out the fellow’s tongue 
with a pair of pliers, and rams it in again with a 
motor tyre lever. Medicine is administered to the 
moribund creature as a horse is drenched with drugs. 
The relatives gather round the bed, and begin to di- 
vide up the man’s property between them. But they 
are reckoning without their host. The wonderful 
drug acts upon the sick man with amazing and mi- 
raculous results. He sits up in bed, waves the throng 
off, spurns his wife aside, leaps from his couch, and 
embraces the pretty nurse ecstatically. This is the 
whole cure; and those who were the spectators have 
now become the imitators, inspired by the mens sana. 
The artists embrace all the pretty girls near them. 
Somebody puts out the electric light, and in the 
darkness we hear squeals and giggles. Thus genius 
amuses itself — thus, the story of the youth of to-day, 
whom Fame will acclaim at maturity to-morrow. 

Just as a man upon his way to a rendezvous, 
where the opportunity of a lifetime awaits him, may 


286 


The Show Girl 


be amused by the gamins of tbe pavement, so did 
this absurdity of the cafe engross me. It was some- 
thing to lean back in my chair and to tell myself 
that I was a prisoner there for Mimi’s sake. Later 
on, when the appointed hour came, I would go to 
her and tell her how I had waited. And prudence 
said that Jules Farman delayed because our very 
success depended on his cleverness. 

Strangers at the cafe — would not that rumour 
be bruited abroad quickly enough. I imagined also 
that he waited for some man to come or go, was 
watching patiently as we sat, and numbering the 
very minutes as the old wooden clock above the door- 
way numbered them. Nor in this was I mistaken. 
At eleven o’clock precisely he rose, and we followed 
him from the place without a word. The great car 
stood already at the door; we entered it, and were 
whirled away as it might seem toward Paris, but in 
reality toward St. Germain and the chateau of Bou- 
gival below the heights. 

Now, this was not a long journey, but to my im- 
patience nigh intolerable. I knew nothing of the 
road we followed; the night was so black that the 
sharpest eyes could make little either of the route 
or its environment. I can only tell you that we per- 
ceived the lights of St. Germain at last, and had no 
sooner set our course toward them than we turned 


287 


The Show Girl 

from the high road and entered upon a narrow track 
which was little better than a waggon-way. This we 
followed, perhaps for the half of a mile, then the 
River Seine came to our view, and at the same 
moment the car stopped, and I knew that this was 
our destination. 

There is no moon before midnight this month, 
and we had fallen upon a black, dark night. My busy 
eyes could follow the silver shimmer upon the still 
water of the river, but little else of the scene about. 
It is true that a glint of light at the far side of a 
meadow seemed to tell of a house there, though of 
what nature I could not hazard. Farman himself 
carried many anxieties, and he entered the wood at 
the roadside, and remained there some minutes alone 
before we had his confidence. When he returned, he 
gathered us about him, and began to speak in a low 
voice. 

“Madame Gastonard,” he said, “has been in that 
house for three days. She was taken there by a man 
named Redotte and the old woman Marie from Or- 
leans. I have reason to believe that both of them 
are in the house to-night. The others were the man 
Jean-le-Mont and the showman Gondre. The former 
is now in our pay, and the latter has been arrested 
at Asnieres to-night. We shall find the man Bedotte 
dangerous, but I do not think he will trouble us very 


288 


The Show Girl 


much. If there should be others with him, whose 
names I do not know, I may have to ask you gentle- 
men to give me some help. Be pleased to take these 
— and to use them if I bid you.” 

He went to the car, and produced three revolvers 
from it. Old Georges Oleander’s protest that he was 
more likely to shoot one of us than any other caused 
a smile even at such a time. But we gave him a 
heavy knobbed stick in place of the pistol, and so 
set out in single file across a marshy meadow toward 
the house. My own place was upon Farman’s heels, 
and I would have given much for another word with 
him. But he walked fast and resolutely, and did 
not stop until a hound began to bay and another to 
answer from a house upon the further side of the 
river. Then he stopped and listened. 

“I had not thought of a dog,” he said quietly; 
“we must remember him, gentlemen.” 

The Chevalier assented with a jest, Georges 
Oleander, I thought, a little dolefully. As for me, 
I did not lift my eyes from the lamp which shone 
across the fields as an omen of salvation. Mimi was 
there, harboured in that mean house. Men so vile 
that no man could name them truly were her jailors, 
and she stood alone among them. Incredible! and 
this was Farman’s story — the word of a man who had 
never lied to me. Oh, think of it all, Paddy, and 


The Show Girl 


289 


try to follow my footsteps toward the house. Be 
patient if the record is not to be set down without 
emotion. 

I had supposed that we should approach the 
place covertly and a tip-toe. Such, however, was not 
to the mind of this amazing Jules Farman. He 
crossed the meadow as bold as any pedestrian out for 
the air on the Champs Elysees, and with less con- 
cern. As the villa took shape against the curtain 
of the sky, I made it out to be little more than a 
modern cottage set in a narrow garden which sloped 
toward the river. There was no other house in 
sight, nor any outstanding object to relieve the sense 
of isolation and security. But the river at the back 
was plainly in our favour, and I judged that the 
common at the front could conceal no sentinel. So 
perhaps I began to understand why Farman went so 
resolutely, and did not halt until we were but fifty 
paces from the door. 

“Monsieur Gastonard,” he said quietly, “you will 
please to use force should the occasion arise. I am 
hoping that it will not arise, and that our visit to the 
cafe will have been useful to us. If you please, gen- 
tlemen.” 

He waited for them to go on, smiling, I thought, 
for a brief instant at old Oleander’s hesitation. 
When they had opened the garden gate — whereby 


290 


The Show Girl 


they paused a little while — the hound ceased to bay, 
and as hounds will, at a resolute approach, began to 
fawn upon them. They were lost to our view, and 
with no further delay, Farman walked toward the 
villa and knocked three times upon its door. 

It would be impossible, Paddy, to tell you of my 
own sensations during these instants of waiting. 
Depict me standing in the miserable patch of formal 
garden, at the door of a paltry red brick villa, listen- 
ing, as I have never listened in all my life, trembling, 
I do believe, in the very excitement of my hope. 
More than once the temptation to cry out almost 
overpowered me. I must tell her that I had come — 
must let Mimi know that I waited for her. I could 
have beaten down twenty doors in my rage against 
delay, smashed the glass of the window to atoms, 
and razed the very building to the ground. Upon 
the other side was this imperturbable Farman, as 
quiet, as cat-like as ever, listening with bent ear, 
betraying no emotion; seemingly convinced already 
of his success. And I must obey him faithfully, wait 
as he waited, crush my impatience in hands of iron. 
Oh, I say, it was intolerable, and yet it was the truth ! 

FTo one answered to our bold knock; the silence 
became almost insupportable. A minute we 
waited, two minutes, and still there was no sound 
but that of our own quick breathing. As for the lamp 


The Show Girl 


291 


which burned so brightly, we could see it plainly, 
standing upon the table of the front room and the 
single ornament of that bare apartment. For the 
rest, there was no carpet on the floor, no ornament, 
no picture — but just the room itself and the bare 
wooden table and the lamp standing upon it. This 
we might have looked for, but not for the mystery 
of the silence, the absolute stillness which met us — 
so that one could have heard a watch ticking in the 
hand. Were the men warned, then? Had they fled 
the place? My heart sank low at the thought — and 
yet it was a thought that crept upon me. 

I had spoken no word to Farman since we entered 
the garden of the house, but this new turn was not 
to be borne, and I could suffer it no longer. A hur- 
ried whisper asked him what he made of it — and, a 
little to my surprise, he answered me aloud. 

“They are asleep,” he said quietly; “we must 
wake them” — and he knocked so loudly that the 
hound began to bay again, and I could hear the 
voice of Oleander cursing him. Plainly, we had 
no further need of concealment. 

“Who is asleep?” I asked a little brutally. “Did 
you not tell me that Madame Gastonard was here ?” 

“I believed so,” he answered as quietly. 

“You believed so — well?” 

“I shall tell you presently.” 


292 


The Show Girl 


His answer told me that he, with all his discern- 
ment, could make little of the situation. My own 
advice had been to force the window of the room, 
and this he now proceeded to do — but first he lighted 
a little lantern and laid his pistol on the sill. A 
disingenuous catch gave way at the first attempt, 
and we climbed through immediately, and went 
straight toward the inner door. Here for an instant 
Farman stood irresolute. 

“There may be some danger,” he said — and then 
he asked me — “are you quite prepared?” 

I whispered that I was, and he flung the door 
wide open, searching the hall beyond with the faint 
rays from a policeman’s lantern. There were signs 
of habitation here such as we might have expected — 
a felt hat upon a cane-seated chair, a basket such 
as women take to market, a stick so heavy that it 
was almost a bludgeon, an old mackintosh hanging 
upon a nail driven into the wall. The floor was un- 
carpeted and showed mud from clumsy boots — at 
the far end the door of the kitchen stood open, and 
a flicker of firelight from the grate still flashed upon 
its plastered walls. Thither now we went cautiously. 
But the place was tenantless — though a kettle still 
sang upon the hob and some dishes stood unwashed 
upon the table. 

I often think, Paddy, that nothing is so sure a 


293 


The Show Girl 

test of a man’s nerves as a house of unknown perils, 
which we must search room by room. I am afraid 
of little in this world. It is no mere boast — for these 
things are purely physical — but I possess some pres- 
ence of mind beyond ordinary, and a contempt for 
many of the situations of danger which tradition 
has glorified. And yet I swear to you, the sweat ran 
down my face like rain while I stood by Farman’s 
side in that shabby kitchen and asked him, what 
next? 

Ho longer did I believe that Mimi was here — 
and yet I was forbidden to say that she was not here. 
The evidence of recent occupation, the shreds of 
coarse food, the empty bottles lying pell-mell in the 
scullery, a woman’s tattered bonnet flung to a cor- 
ner, a little jug of milk set apart with a few dry bis- 
cuits — these were the witnesses to Farman’s good 
faith and witnesses no logic could shake. 

As he had spoken, so the truth — that my dear 
wife had been the captive of these ruffians in this 
very house, that she might even be a captive still 
or worse than a captive. For now I shall tell you 
that an overmastering fear of the worst took posses- 
sion of me and would not be quieted. I cared noth- 
ing for the men or the danger of their presence. 
Every step, long dragged out and heavy, was as a 
step toward a dreadful secret. The upper stories of 


294 


The Show Girl 


the house became in an instant the chambers of the 
terrible truth. And above all was the torture of the 
thought that we had come too late, and but for those 
useless hours at St. Germain might have saved her. 
This latter brought me to the nadir of despair. Even 
Farman took pity upon me. 

“I begin to think that Madame is not here,” he 
said quietly. “Let us go upstairs — we shall not be 
long in doubt.” 

I looked him full in the face, and did not spare 
him the question. 

“Is she alive, Farman?” 

“Why should they kill her? The blackmailer 
never kills — he has not the courage.” 

I could but shrug my shoulders. 

“Then their object has been blackmail?” 

“It could be nothing else, Monsieur.” 

I admitted his reasoning, but it did little to con- 
sole me. If there were peril of our proceeding this 
must be the moment of it. For we had to climb the 
narrow stairway, ignorant of those who were above, 
and powerless to shield ourselves from their attack. 

How it came that I was up on the first floor be- 
fore Jules Farman I am not able to tell you. I re- 
member only that I stood on a dark landing listening 
to my own heavy breathing, and unable to distinguish 
other sounds. What light there was came astreak 


The Show Girl 


295 


through a narrow window high above us. I could 
make out the shapes of doors, hut they were shut and 
meaningless. The floor was but a black patch until 
a warm ray of light shone down upon it from my 
companion’s lantern and instantly declared its secret. 

An old woman lay there — a shrivelled, white- 
faced hag of a woman, whose clothes were little more 
than a bundle of rags, whose hand still clutched the 
heavy stick with which, perchance, she had been 
struck down. And this Jezebel had gone to her ac- 
count. The mask of death is sometimes unmistak- 
able. It was unmistakable on Triday night when I 
came face to face with the old woman, Marie of Or- 
leans, upon the landing of the house at Bougival. 

I say that it was a dreadful discovery, and yet, 
God knows, my thoughts in the instant of it were 
less of this stricken huddled body upon the floor than 
of the events which had preceded the murder. There 
is always awe of death, Paddy, however humble the 
subject, however callous the discoverer. And at the 
dark of the night in a lonely house with mystery 
whispering all about, the awe is manifold. Here we 
were, stooping to put our hands upon the dead wom- 
an’s heart, listening as we did so for any sounds from 
the secret rooms, and yet, perchance thinking of our 
own safety all the while. Who had been the instru- 
ments of our vengeance upon this mumbling hag? 


296 


The Show Girl 


Must we unearth them presently, strike them down 
as they had struck her, spend the precious hours in 
such a butcher’s task? 

For my part, I thought that any instant might 
bring the ruffians upon us. It was a trial intolerable 
to watch the closed doors and wait for them to open. 
Why did the men delay ? And Mimi — my God, why 
was she silent? Then a better instinct began to say 
that she was not here, and this gave me courage. 
Let me know the fact for a truth, and I cared not 
how many villains were harboured here. 

We opened the doors one by one, Farman carry- 
ing his lantern. I had a revolver at the cock. But 
I shall tell you at once that we discovered nothing. 
There were beds in two of the rooms, and a third had 
a paltry ameublement which spoke of a gentler occu- 
pation. But in the main the house remained the 
same hard and chilling villa that we had imagined 
it to be — and I vow that there was something beyond 
all words melancholy in that secret which lay at the 
heart of it. An empty, barren house and a dead 
woman’s body upon the stairs. So much for Bougi- 
val — so much for all our plotting and our planning 
and our bold emprise. 

The men who had done this thing had been 
warned. They had fled the neighbourhood, cheated 
us, and perchance the police. Even Farman admit- 


The Show Girl 297 

ted as much when he called us together and deigned, 
for the first time, to share a confidence. 

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I cannot blame myself. 
The man Bedotte was here an hour ago — I knew 
that Madame Gastonard was here at sunset. You 
see what has happened — there has been a quarrel, 
and this woman has been killed. I would have come 
to Bougival sooner if it had been safe to come — but 
I was afraid for Madame Gastonard while the show- 
man Gondre was here. We set a trap for him and he 
has been taken at Asnieres to-night. The other man, 
Bedotte, has not been sober for many days. That 
is why I came to the house as I did; but, believe me, 
if what I surmise be true, nothing has been lost by 
delay, and we shall have good news of Madame to- 
morrow. I am now to leave the police to do their 
own business here and to advise Monsieur Lepine of 
ours. We may return immediately to Paris, for 
our work is done.” 

And so, Paddy, we left this melancholy house and 
returned to the car. I can still see the villa, the 
lamp shining from the lonely room, and the river 
bathed in moonlight — for the moon was up by this 
time and all the scene made glorious. It was some- 
thing, at least, to know that my beloved wife had 
escaped that mean temple of death, perchance had 
known nothing of its secrets. None the less, I clung 


298 


The Show Girl 


to the neighbourhood as to some place which should 
minister to my sentiment, and, determining to stay 
the night at St. Germain, returned thither with my 
companions. They, be sure, were not the men to 
decline such hospitality, and they sat up with me 
until dawn, offering a thousand explanations of Far- 
man’s conduct, and justifying it in no way. 

What was this man keeping back from us ? Why 
did he, who had served me so faithfully many a day, 
serve me so ill to-night ? Recollect that I had but the 
shabbiest of facts from him. He had told me merely 
that my wife had been abducted from her house by 
those who had known her as Mimi La Godiche at 
Montmartre, and who believed that they could profit 
by the knowledge. And upon this a talk of black- 
mail — yet not a word that would enlighten me, no 
names, no histories — nothing but the intimation. 
This we said again and again as we sat in my room 
at the Pavilion Hotel and waited for the day. Cir- 
cumstance had deluded us. We could make noth- 
ing of it. 

***** 

I had nothing from Farman yesterday, but to-day 
there came a little note in which, evading other is- 
sues, he tells me that the man Bedotte has been 
traced to Rheims, and is evidently making for Brus- 
sels; but that the police are close upon his track, and 


The Show Girl 


299 


an immediate arrest is expected. “As for Madame,” 
lie says, “the opinion is growing that she escaped from 
the house and need no longer be sought among these 
people.” But of this he will write me further at a 
later hour. 

And so you see, Paddy, that I am tied to this 
hotel in as great a state of doubt and perplexity, of 
hope and longing, as ever mortal suffered. I know 
not what to decide, what to believe. Inconceivable, 
indeed, that Mimi should not have gone straight to 
Paris, if this tale of escape were true. A telegram 
assures me that nothing is known of her, either at 
the Hotel St. Paul or at Montmartre; and had you 
in England any news, I doubt not it would have come 
to me before this. What, then, am I to say? That 
she has not wished to return to me? God forbid any 
such thought. 

I will send you another letter in the morning, 
as soon as the event permits. Should anything hap- 
pen in London, let nothing delay a telegram. Of 
the trivial affairs, there is a request here from the 
editor of the “Daily Bulletin” that I will write a 
second letter for him. It would serve no purpose, 
and I have said so. His desire to see me privately 
dictates the wish that you shall be my ambassador. 
Quit the game of golf and the perambulators and 
spend a quiet hour in Fleet-street. The power of the 


300 The Show Girl 

press is a wonderful thing, I assure you, but the 
journalist at lunch by no means terrifying. Ask 
the good fellow to meet you at the Savoy, and I do 
not think the state of parties will forbid. 

How odd it seems to be writing like this. I feel 
ifc not at all. The shadows crowd upon me. If I 
could but say, Let there be light ! 

Yours, dear Paddy, 

Henry Gastonard. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 


[The Reverend Arthur Warrington rebukes his 
wife, Martha Warrington, upon a trivial ac- 
count] 


The Red Farm, Baldon, Suffolk, 
Sunday within the Octave of All Saints. 

Dear Martha, — Your continued stay with my 
cousins at Cambridge does not seem a great com- 
pliment to your husband. John is a very estimable 
man, it is true ; but I ask you if it is discreet or pru- 
dent that a clergyman’s wife should associate with 
one who is not ashamed to attend the horse races at 
Newmarket, and has declared from a public plat- 
form that the Anti-Field Sports’ League is a society 
of charlatans. 

I had expected you to return and tell me more 
of this dreadful affair in which our cousin Henry 
is implicated. Is it kind to protract my anxieties? 
If it indeed be true that his unhappy wife has fled, 
then I think that the future need give us little anx- 
iety. I say, God forbid that any harm should have 
overtaken the poor creature; but the human destinies 
301 


302 


The Show Girl 

are not in our hands, and we must humbly bow to 
them. To-day I wrote to Mr. Frogg, suggesting that 
we had some right to an inventory of the property. 
The great house at Fawlands, now let to Lord Les- 
borough, contains priceless furniture bought by 
Henry’s father, my uncle, and of this a valuation 
should be made. It is possible that by judicious econ- 
omy and some practice of self-denial — in which I 
shall invite your cordial help — we might be able to 
live there ourselves when the present tenancy is 
terminated. But I shall permit no worldly ambitions 
to hamper my sacred calling, and in this course I 
must be guided by the Bishop. There is a See to be 
founded presently at Bury St. Edmunds, and there 
should be four residentiary canonries as a minimum. 
Here your brother’s influence with the Lord Chan- 
cellor may help us, and I should not hesitate to give 
a series of dinners in London to promote so worthy 
an aim. After all, rich men owe something to so- 
ciety, to do their duty in that state into which they 
were born; and we should be strangely forgetful of 
our privileges if we were merely to husband this 
money which the Lord has put into our keeping. 

Would you not like to be a canon’s wife, Martha? 
Remember that a Deanery may lie beyond, or even 
a Bishopric. I will not permit myself to think of 
these things. To-morrow I should have an answer 


The Show Girl 


303 


from Mr. Fogg, and also, I hope, a letter announcing 
your return. These sporting people, surely, are no 
fit companions for a clergyman’s wife! 

Your devoted husband, 

Arthur. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 


[We hear of Paddy O’Connell in a letter to Martha 

Warrington at Cambridge.] 

Dear Mrs. Warrington, — I am careful, you see, 
not to say “Martha,” lest this letter should fall into 
your husband’s hands — bad cess to him! and he be 
making a fool of himself, as you say that he would. 
So it shall just be “Mrs. Warrington,” though laugh- 
ing up my sleeve I am all the time, and you the 
same, I do not doubt. 

Well, my dear, I am having the blazes of a time 
in this wilderness of a place, and all for my friend’s 
sake; though, God knows what use I am to him any 
more than the policeman at the corner, who has had 
many a good glass of my whisky, and would like 
many another. Harry says ’tis to Paris I am to go 
presently, though what for the old gentleman him- 
self would be hard put to it to guess. The last news 
I have from him speaks of the dreadful things we 
read in the papers this morning. It would be clear 
that the little witch is gone from the people that 
have had charge of her, and that this wicked story 
304 


The Show Girl 


305 


of wrong and mystery is no clearer to ns than ever 
it was. But so far as it goes, we must be content 
with it; for I would no more doubt her than I would 
doubt my sister Clara, and whatever she has done 
has been done for the best — of that I am sure. 

Did it never occur to you that this pretty child 
may have a history out of the ordinary? It has been 
in my mind since the first day of our meeting, and as 
more in my mind than ever to-day. Who was her 
father? but, more important to ask, what was her 
mother’s name? Did you never hear tell of the 
airs and graces of her, the pretty ways that were 
strange in a showman’s tent, and the dignity which 
no man ever humbled? We may have lost good 
manners in this twentieth century, Mrs. W arrington, 
but we haven’t lost the good sense which tells us 
whether our fathers were gentlemen or villains, and 
this is an instinct we’ll keep yet awhile. 

I say that Mimi Gastonard is the daughter 
neither of a showman nor a peasant, and if my sur- 
mise is not correct, put Paddy O’Connell down with 
the fools. 

To speak of things better understood, I don’t 
wonder to hear that you were annoyed about the 
horse-racing. ’T'is no consolation to have missed 
those same great races, the Csesare witch and Cam- 
bridgeshire, and you so near to the course. Your 


306 


The Show Girl 


cousin John evidently knows a good thing, and his 
win upon the double event must have gladdened 
your heart. But I’m sorry to hear that he put but 
a sovereign apiece on for you, and he might well 
have made it a tenner. Man is a curious animal, 
and always niggardly about his own kills. I shall 
tell Mr. John that same if ever I meet him. 

Well, Martha, I miss the piquet we used to play 
on quiet afternoons, and that’s a certainty. This 
god-forsaken Hampstead puts pistols in my hands 
every evening, and takes them out again when the 
sun shines in the morning. Just to think that the 
riding has begun in Ireland, and me, Paddy O’Con- 
nell, doomed to a six-shilling hack and a gallop as 
far as your arms can reach. Yesterday, in Harry’s 
interest, I lunched with a newspaper msfn at the 
Savoy Hotel, and was much disappointed to find that 
he drank water. “ ’T'is a little gas one needs in poli- 
tics,” says I, “and champagne’s the stuff;” but he 
would have none of it. I should tell you that he 
has big notions of Harry’s literary gifts, and wants 
some more letters out of him. I told him a story 
or two about the parish priest of Glendalough, who, 
when the Bishop told him that golf was sending men 
to the devil fast, replied that he wondered at it, for 
they did it mostly on sloe gin. After this, he asked 
me to write a series of papers on “a humorist in the 


The Show Girl 


307 


mountains of Ireland.” But I declined immediately. 
“ ’Twould be over the heads of your people,” says I, 
“and that’s where all good Catholics should be in 
this life or the next.” 

I expect to go to Paris to-morrow or the day 
after, and will write you when I get there. There 
is a parcel of books at the house, sent to you by your 
husband; but you don’t seem to have opened them. 
Will I forward them on or give them to the heathen? 
Advise me by return. 

And with kind regards, please find me, yours, as 
per last, 

Paddy O’Conxell. 

There was a curate man got hold of me in Hamp- 
stead, and took me to a Christian Endeavour meet- 
ing. He persuaded me to put on the boxing gloves, 
and one of his flock gave me a precious black eye. 
’Twas a Christian endeavour surely, and cost me a 
bandage. So I’m only seeing half of this letter, 
which you can tell your husband if it should fall into 
his hands. 


CHAPTER XL. 


[A Brief Hote from Jules Earman in Paris to 

Henry Gastonard at St. Germain.] 

4 (bis), Rue du Quatre Septembre, 
November 8tb, 1905. 

Monsieur, — I am very well able to understand 
your displeasure, and regret that it should have been 
incurred. Permit me to assure you that I have not 
deserved it. The circumstances of this unhappy 
case concern so many others, there are so many 
threads to this tangled skein that I crave your indul- 
gence if all does not march as you would wish it. 

You heard from me yesterday the welcome ti- 
dings both of Madame’s safety and of her content. 
When the moment comes — and it is hourly expected 
— I feel that you will be the first to acquit me of 
the deception which has been practised. Madame 
believes that you are on your way from England, 
and will arrive in Paris, it may be to-day, it may be 
to-morrow. When you are with her, I doubt not 
that you will readily understand both our desire for 
delay and her continued residence. This story, 
308 


The Show Girl 


309 


believe me, is put forward for the best of reasons — 
reasons, I repeat, which you cannot fail to approve. 

But something, Monsieur, may be told by me in 
the meanwhile, and that I do not hesitate to write. 
It is now clear that Madame Gastonard was placed 
as a child at the Convent of the Sisters of the Sacred 
Heart at Feonville, near Orleans. A childish frolic 
carried her from the gardens of the old house to 
the woods upon the road to Blois, where she fell into 
the evil hands of the murdered woman, Marie Bor- 
don, and was by her sold to the travelling showman, 
Gondre. So, passed from hand to hand, she becomes 
the servant of these rogues, and is lucky to find a 
home at last with that honest man Cassadore. Her 
story until the moment of her entry into the Con- 
vent School will be told to you by others, I trust, 
before many days are passed. 

I have directed, Monsieur, that this message 
shall reach you at St. Germain, believing that, your 
continued stay in that town is both wise and con- 
venient. In the meantime, dear sir, be assured of 
the loyal service of, 

Your devoted, 

Jules Henry F arman. 


CHAPTER XLI. 


[In which Henry Gastonard receives a summons 

from the Marquis de Saint Eaur.] 

Chateau of Bougival, 
November 8th, 1905. 

Hear Mr. Gastonard, — The obligation of silence 
which recent events have imposed upon me is the 
more deserving of apology as it is the less possible 
of explanation. 

May I beg of you to believe that all which has 
been done, or contemplated, is such as would appeal 
to any man of honour, and particularly to one who 
has shown such gifts of prudence and self-restraint as 
you have done these latter days? 

The story of Madame Gastonard’s infancy is not 
one which may be written circumstantially even for 
you, Monsieur. But the pages which are missing will 
be supplied by your knowledge and experience of the 
world and of men, and will not be regretted because 
of that knowledge. Great names are implicated, and 
particularly the name of a noble woman, who has 
suffered much, and yet must suffer. I beg you, in 
310 


The Show Girl 311 

the name of womanhood, to bear this fact in mind 
from the beginning. 

For the rest, I am content that your judgment 
shall decide what is to be told to the world and what 
concealed. The rest is your own — an inheritance 
of a destiny once decreed and irrevocable. 

Do me the honour, I beg of you, to come to the 
Chateau de Bougival without delay, there to hear 
from Madame Gastonard’s own lips both the story 
of these recent days as she alone may tell it, and that 
other story, which will be told for the first time to 
any man by, Yours, with cordial esteem, 

Gaspabd de Saint Faue. 


CHAPTER XLII. 


[Paddy O’Connell hears that he may leave London, 
and is invited to take the first train to Paris.] 

Chateau de Bougival, near Paris, 
November 15th, 1905. 

Dear Paddy, — Please to pack that monstrous bag 
of yours, and to come to us immediately. You will 
get a train from Paris to St. Germain, and I will 
send a motor there to meet you. But be sure to wire, 
for Mimi says you are more likely to send your tele- 
gram from this house than from London. 

Oh, Paddy, Paddy — what a day, what news, what 
happiness ! I am here in this old chateau, and Mimi 
is at my feet while I write to you. We have before 
us the great park of Bougival; there is warm sun- 
shine though the month is November; the trees 
are bare and leafless, but they show us the shining 
river, and it shall wing our message to the friends 
who love us. For thirty-six hours I have hardly let 
Mimi escape from my arms, but to-day she bids me 
write to you; and I obey, even as she who watches 
312 


The Show Girl 313 

me with such a story of love and gratitude in her 
childish eyes. 

I have found her — the dreadful days will come 
no more; already we have learned to believe that yes- 
terday was not, and that to-day is eternal. So much 
is to be told immediately; but of the rest your own 
perception shall tell you, and you alone, when you 
come to Bougival. And you will come without 
delay. Trains shall be too slow for you; the sea 
shall provoke you; the inventions of man imprison 
those kindly thoughts you would speed to us. As 
you stood beside us in the hour of darkness, so now 
will you stand with us in the light — the first and 
best and biggest-hearted of our friends. So I repeat, 
let nothing prevent you, but come, for we weary 
for you. 

It was on Wednesday afternoon that I received 
a letter from the Marquis de Saint Faur inviting me 
to this place. There was little in it that would inter- 
est you beyond the invitation which it contained, 
and you may imagine with what haste I set out at 
its commands. Oh, be sure, I had some dim percep- 
tion of the truth, or I would not have been content 
to rest in that lonely hotel, as I did, and to suffer 
patiently the mysteries which crowded upon me. 
Mimi was well, I said, and had the best of reasons 
for her silence. 


314 


The Show Girl 

To-day I know it was the truth. If you ever 
come to understand, Paddy — in which case you will 
be the one man in all Europe who will share the 
great truth with me — then your own shrewd com- 
mon-sense will have written the story for you. My 
lips are sealed; I am content that they should be 
sealed. For is not Mimi at my feet while I write, 
and may not I stoop to kiss her rosy cheeks when I 
will? 

I set out for Bougival on Wednesday night, then, 
and in 20 minutes was at its gates. To my inquiry 
whether the Marquis owned the Chateau, the people 
about gave an evasive answer. Some seemed to think 
that he did; others spoke of a foreign tenancy, 
chiefly by that beautiful but notorious woman the 
Princess Helene of Ilidze, and her cousin the Duchess 
de Bourg. Both these ladies had been with Saint 
Faur when I met him at the Bitz Hotel in Paris; 
and from all that gossip says, it was no surprise to 
me that one of them, at any rate, should be found 
at Bougival. But of this I had little time to specu- 
late, for I set out for the Chateau within half an 
hour of receiving the Marquis’s letter, and was at 
the gates exactly at seven o’clock on Wednesday 
evening. 

I knew that it was seven o’clock, for bells chimed 
as my car raced up the long avenue from the lodge, 


The Show Girl 


315 


and the great clock above the stables was still telling 
the hour when a butler opened the door to me and 
invited me within. That the servants expected me 
it was not possible to doubt. Neither my name nor 
my business was asked, but being conducted directly 
into the great hall of the chateau, footmen relieved 
me of my wraps and assured me that Monsieur le 
Marquis should at once he informed of my arrival. 
And so they left me in that stately place; and for 
the first time since the letter came to me, I could 
ask myself the meaning both of it and of this be- 
wildering sequel. 

Imagine a vast apartment, Paddy, domed above 
and built almost entirely of marble. There were 
mosaics in gold for the frieze and paintings above, 
such paintings as Yernet made for the ceilings of 
the Louvre, hut skilfully adapted to a vast and 
ornate concavity. A wide staircase glowing with a 
crimson carpet boasts five caryatides to hear its bur- 
dens. The chimney is a masterpiece by an unknown 
artist — a colossal structure protruding centaurs far 
into the room and pillared with jasper and chalce- 
dony. Above there is a great picture of Turenne, 
the Turenne of the fables and the wars, mounted 
and riding as a Marshal-General of France. Other 
portraits also of soldiers adorn the place, hut there 
is one of the Empress Josephine, painted, I imagine, 


316 


The Show Girl 


during the stormy days of St. Cloud, and cleverly 
reflective of that turbulent time, which is a master- 
piece beyond all question. As to the furniture, it is 
sparse but very beautiful. I note a clock with the 
Graces which could not be bettered at Fontaine- 
bleau. A massive bureau is in the finest style of that 
magnificent Boulle whom posterity has imitated and 
derided. A brief glance says that this apartment 
stands as an atrium to a house of princes. The 
manner of it, the size of it, that indefinable atmos- 
phere which the ages create could never mislead. 
I am in the house of an aristocrat, and he has sum- 
moned me to find Mimi there. 

So much is plain from the beginning, but the 
event which carried my beloved wife to such a 
place, which sealed her lips while she resided there, 
and brings me to her as a very suppliant, is dwelt 
upon almost with reluctance, stands, it may be, 
almost as a shadow beyond. I seem to know, and 
yet I do not know. You, Paddy, with your powers 
of swift perception, will not fail to understand me. 
You will read already in this book of an amazing 
destiny. 

I say that they left me in this splendid hall, and 
that for many minutes I had no companion there. 
The house itself spoke both of occupation and of 
ceremony. I perceived footmen about the table in 


317 


The Show Girl 

the dining-room, whose door opened to the right of 
the great fireplace where the logs blazed brightly. 
The landing above echoed the voices of maids, and, 
upon that, another voice which caused my heart to 
leap as though one had spoken to me from the grave. 
When a chime of bells echoed musically in the 
heights of the dome, I understood that they were 
ringing the dressing-bell, and remembered with 
some consternation that I had come to the chateau 
“as I was.” But the thought passed away as swiftly 
as car and train could carry me. 

If anything disturbed my serenity, it was the 
absence of the Marquis. He knew of my arrival, 
and should, I thought, have welcomed me the sooner. 
But the minutes passed, and still he did not come; 
and one by one the old phantoms swarmed up to 
torment me. If she were not here, after all! If 
a trick had been played me! Inconceivable, and 
yet how real to a man who had suffered so much. 

It was odd, Paddy, but all memory of the tragic 
days we have lived through passed utterly from my 
recollection in that house. Ho longer did I care 
what the world had said of Mimi or what it would 
say to-morrow. That awful night, when I stood 
upon the threshold of my little house to gape upon 
a dead man’s body and to know that my wife had 
left me; that had been wiped out of my calendar 


318 


The Show Girl 


as though a hand of mercy reviewed the page. The 
house in which I stood, the great names I had heard, 
Mimi’s presence at the chateau — with what woeful 
reiteration did I not repeat the harassing questions 
to which I had no answer. She knew that I was 
here and yet she did not come to me ! How my 
heart sank at that! What an abasement of love 
and faith — and how swift a repentance ! 

She comes at last — I hear the patter of feet on 
the stairs above — so gentle that it might be the south 
wind brushing the cheeks of a rose. What a moment 
to live as I turn about to spy a sweet apparition on 
the stairs, to watch a girlish figure descend them 
one by one, to say that she is my Mimi, and yet to 
remain almost unbelieving. Stand so far with me, 
Paddy, but then shall you turn your eyes away. 
There are things said and done between two who 
love which are holy in their sanctity and God-given 
in their secrecy. Were it otherwise I could no more 
tell you what befell us in that instant of greeting 
than I could speak the dreams which the lightest 
hours of sleep have given me. Was it not enough 
that I caught her in my arms and that kisses for- 
bade her to speak at all? Are there not hours of 
living so precious that they would remain heaven 
though it were hell afterwards to all eternity ? And 
such an hour was that at the Chateau of Bougival — 


The Show Girl 


319 


when Mimi ran down the great staircase to my 
embrace, and my lips sealed her sweet confession. 

You will remember that she wore a trim black 
dress when she was with us at Hampstead, made 
cleverly as the French make all these things; but 
a little overmuch in the fashion of the nunneries. 
I recollect that we chaffed her about it, and that 
the Chevalier would have gone out to get a Fran- 
ciscan robe to match it; while old Georges Oleander 
was all for singing the office, especially that part 
of it which counsels the giving of alms to the needy. 

This dress and the pretty picture it enshrined 
have stood during all these weary days for my image 
of Mimi as I should find her at last and take her 
again to my house. But it was not to be. The 
Chateau of Bougival has dealt too well by its pris- 
oner. Ho little girl of the atelier and the mountain 
descended that proud staircase to my embrace. In 
her place I found a stately figure of Paris, gowned 
and dining; a Mimi robed in silk and chiffon, with 
a gift of jewels about her white neck and a sparkle 
of diamonds upon her arms. Oh, and the grace and 
shyness of her, as though she were half afraid, but 
wholly sure of her reception ! And here is the 
wonder. She spoke not at all of the things I had 
expected to hear from her lips. She told me nothing 
of the night of crime and flight; nothing of the days 


320 


The Show Girl 

intervening; no story of her coming to this house — 
but happy in my arms she laughed at my perplexities 
and asked me if I would have her otherwise. And, 
Paddy, I knew not what to say to her. She is 
changed as it were in a twinkling. My quick per- 
ception could not put the fact aside. She has come 
into her inheritance — she is Mimi of the Butte no 
longer and never will be again. 

Let me try to tell you of the talk which passed 
between us as we stood together in the hall and 
cared less than nothing though all France had been 
listening. It will not be to write down the sighs 
and sounds of a lover’s meeting — you, Paddy, of all 
men care nothing for those since you met the widow 
at Ostend; but I would wish to tell you how cleverly 
this mere child kept, even from me, the things she 
had been charged to hold sacred, and how even my 
persistency* could not shake her. And first, of our 
meeting in the house at all. 

“The Marquis sent for me, Mimi,” said I; “I 
looked to find him here.” 

“And you found me, Monsieur Henry ” 

“Monsieur Henry! Am I that to you, Mimi? 
Is it the Mimi of the Lapin Agil again? Let me 
look into your eyes — let me see why you are 
changed.” 


The Show Girl 321 

“I am not changed,” she rejoined very sweetly, 
“but I am very happy, mon mari/ y 

“How long have you been in this house, Mimi?” 

She tried to think. An impaired memory is 
among the first fruits of all that has befallen her. 

“Ah , mes enfants , how long have I been here? 
There would he nights and days — long nights and 
days. Then Madame came and I was happy. She 
wfill tell you, Harry — she can remember how long 
I have been here.” 

“Did the Marquis bring you, then? Did he dis- 
cover you at the villa?” 

She shuddered; a spasm of pain crossed her face. 
I regretted that I had spoken of such a place at all. 

“Bedotte went down to the river,” she said 
presently, her mind gathering the threads one by 
one, “I was alone and afraid. Alors , the woman 
Marie is there and I think of her. Ah, mes enfants! 
She comes to my bedroom and begins to tell me the 
things I heard long ago, when I was a little child 
and ran away to the woods. I think she was ivre, 
mon mari — and I laughed at her. Then I saw that 
she was no longer the Madame Marie who had 
frightened me. She prayed and mumbled and wept. 
Oh, it was droll, for she seemed to think I was a 
baby again and would have sung me to the sleep. 
But I crept away, and then she told me to go. It 


322 


The Show Girl 


was mechante to hear that. ‘Go/ she said, and she 
tumbled to the door and held it wide open — and the 
black house was there and the men to kill me. I 
was afraid to go, and I told her so, and then she 
wept again and sat by the fire rocking herself as a 
baby. I was frightened, affreusement , but I went 
to the top of the stairs and then a little way down 
them. Monsieur Bedotte had not returned, so I 
opened the door. And then I ran away from them 
— Jesu, how I ran! The woman called to me from 
the window, but still I ran, until I heard her scream, 
and then I could run no more. A long while after- 
wards I came to the river and the boat; and when 
I asked the boatman to take me to Paris he laughed. 
I should have been afraid of him also, mon mari , 
if there had not been someone else in the ship, a 
great big monsieur, big as Monsieur Paddy and as 
kind. He asked me why I wished to go to Paris, 
and I told him. He said he would take me there 
but that I must rest first. Then he brought me to 
this house and Monsieur the Marquis came to speak 
to me. He promised that he would write to you — 
and now you have come — ah, mes enfants, you have 
come and I am happy.” 

She spoke slowly, Paddy, and with less than a 
Frenchwoman’s volubility. Perceive that she had 
told me nothing of the house itself, of its master or 


The Show Girl 323 

its mistress. The dramatic story of her flight from 
the villa may have been her apology. 

Cannot yon depict the scene — the rogue’s house 
standing apart in the meadow by the river — one 
blackguard summoned to Asnieres by a trick and 
arrested there — another betraying the gang; a third 
leaving the old witch in charge and going, perchance 
to a cabaret to drink? 

He returns and finds the captive fled; in a savage 
outburst he strikes the old woman dead and leaves 
her body in the house. We arrive when all this has 
happened, but our knowledge of human nature is not 
deep enough to read the riddle aright. We do not 
say that even this hag may have known an instant’s 
humanity, though it were the humanity of the 
bottle. She moans and babbles and weeps — the 
motherhood of the dead past stirs again in her veins, 
warmed by absinthe or bad brandy — and she bids 
the child to go. Thus in a frenzy she invites the 
death which must await her. The man returns and 
attacks her brutally. He knows that the game is 
up, while we are but guessing at the nature of his 
pastime. 

This much was plain to me; but the sequel to 
the story I found as perplexing as ever. Hor had I 
any further opportunity at that moment to question 
the little girl who shrank in my embrace as though 


324 


The Show Girl 

afraid of her own narration. For that matter the 
Marquis himself appeared now, and hastened to 
excuse himself. He was a fine figure of a man in 
his dinner dress, and so natural in his grand manner 
that none hut a clown would have mocked it. Almost 
his first words informed me that he had sent a 
motor to St. Germain for my baggage and com- 
manded me to sleep at the Chateau. 

“There will be much to speak of to-morrow,” he 
said, addressing both my little wife and myself; “for 
the moment it is sufficient to dine. Let Joseph show 
you to your room, Mr. Gastonard. I am sure you 
are very tired.” 

I did not demur, and finding my clothes already 
laid out for me, I dressed with what haste I could 
and descended to a little salon upon the first floor 
where they told me I should find the ladies. Mimi 
was here, and with her that remarkable woman the 
Princess Helene of Ilidze and her constant com- 
panion the Duchesse de Pourg. Even you know 
something of the adventurous life of the former. 
All the world followed her flight from the Austrian 
Court with the singer Monterez; her amazing 
escapades at Geneva have never been concealed; her 
subsequent appearance in Paris and friendship with 
the Marquis de Saint Faur have long ceased to 
amuse as gossip. 


The Show Girl 


325 


An old story now, but unforgotten, Paddy. She 
preserves an ancient beauty with little art, I per- 
ceive. There is no finer intellect in all Europe, no 
woman possessing so many accomplishments with so 
little of mediocrity in their display. Her volume on 
the “Story of Hungary” is a classic. She has had an 
operetta done in Milan with sufficient critical abuse 
to ensure its success. Kindly tongues would give 
her forty-five years, I suppose. She might be any- 
thing from thirty-five to fifty; for she is one of those 
women who go arm in arm with Time and are care- 
ful not to quarrel with him. 

This was the lady who presided on Wednesday 
night at the dinner-table in the Chateau of Bougival. 
The little dark Duchesse, her companion, is but the 
setting to the jewel. I noticed that she ate and drank 
with much dispatch, as subservient people will — 
wreaking her silent vengeance upon the viands. The 
Princess herself talked incessantly, and chiefly to 
me. Her range of subjects was amazing. I laughed 
at the sketch of the typical Englishman, whose foot 
is on his native heath but whose heart is in the Jar- 
din de Paris. The Emperor Franz Joseph is the 
greatest man in the world, she thinks, and Anatole 
Prance the next to him. Paris, she declares, is being 
spoiled by the Socialists. The new Frenchman is 
well represented by the ugly steam trams which dis- 


326 


The Show Girl 


figure his streets. Religion is fashionable only 
among monarchists, and will profit eventually by 
their conservative traditions. Sentiment is departing 
from France; it would be a good thing if a king 
were chosen and murdered — for that would revive 
sentiment. As for art, the moderns are getting as 
good as they deserve, and if they desire better, they 
should hang the picture-dealers. She herself has 
recently discovered Corfu and means to build a villa 
there. She declares it to be the finest climate in 
the world — and you can only play roulette when the 
sun is shining. All this, mind you, in a mood most 
frivolous; by no means embarrassed, casting sweet 
smiles about her, and stroking little Mimi’s hands 
from time to time as though a new pet had come 
into her house and must be made much of. 

Row, Paddy, I am but a narrator of facts as far 
as this letter goes — the thinking must be done by 
you. Why has this extraordinary woman kept Mimi 
in this house? And what is the meaning of such 
amity? I could but make a hazard at the dinner- 
table and less than a hazard afterwards. In truth 
we settled down to a formal evening, just as though 
Mimi and I had driven over from a neighbouring 
chateau and were to return presently. A game of 
billiards with the Marquis, a little gallantry played 
by the obliging Duchesse — and then to bed. And 


The Show Girl 327 

through it all my dear wife acting a part to perfec- 
tion. 

I swear she was wonderful, Paddy — this flower 
of the fetes, this child of the atelier playing the 
grand dame at the Chateau of Bougival as though 
born to it. If she tripped once or twice the stumbles 
were humorous enough, just a catchword from the 
Butte, a sudden jest — it may be an inelegant atti- 
tude. But in the main as little to be criticised as 
Madame the Princess herself — a woman who also has 
lived in the ateliers and is not entirely a stranger to 
the student’s quarters. 

I say that I watched the play amazed alike at 
Mimi’s part therein and understanding little until 
we were alone in our bedroom together. Then almost 
with dramatic suddenness the child’s courage left 
her. She fell into my arms in a passion of weeping 
— she whispered in my ear a truth that I had ex- 
pected from the beginning. Pride in it, love, shame, 
— all were there. And I hushed her to sleep upon 
it, my beloved, who has come to me from the un- 
known but can speak to-day with other children of 
immortal memories and the golden days. Let this 
be her message to you, Paddy — and let this be my 
Good Hight. Mimi is happy and knows the secrets 
of the years. Do you in your turn come to us as 


328 


The Show Girl 


swiftly as may be. Have we not as much need of 
our friends in our joy as in our sorrow? 

And so I shall look for you by any — or as you 
would say, by every train. Bis dat qui cito dat — 
which is to say “Hasten.” 

Yours ever, 

Barry GtASTONARD. 


CHAPTER XLIII. 


[Martha Warrington, being returned to her home, 
receives there a letter from the Chateau of Boug- 
ival.] 


Chateau de Bougival, 
November 19th, 1905. 

Dear Mrs. Warrington, — I have to tell you that 
I have left the horse-riders of Hampstead and am 
come to this house, which is a palace not far from 
Paris, and as comfortable quarters as Paddy O’Con- 
nell has ’lighted upon these many days. Should you 
wish to write to me, address the letter as above, 
though you might put “care of the Marquis de Saint 
Eaur,” who is one of my friends, and a very noble 
gentleman. 

Well, I arrived here after the blazes of a jour- 
ney, and not knowing at all why Henry had sent for 
me. At first I thought it would be some news which 
he could not well put on paper, and after that I 
thought it wouldn’t. Bougival, I would tell you, is 
a stretch of park-land on the river near Paris, lying 
under the height of St. Germain, which you will 
329 


330 


The Show Girl 


have heard of in the French books your husband for- 
bids you to read. The train took me to the station 
of the place, and a fine motor-car from there to the 
. house; so, you see, I was made much of, and mighty 
pleased with myself when I set foot in what the 
French call “the vestibule.” 

’T'is true that the footmen — and the Marquis 
must have half a hundred of them in this place — 
speak the French tongue poorly, and that I had to 
fall back on my Sassenach; but we must allow some- 
thing to ignorance, and that is as cheap an article in 
France as in England. Any way, I couldn’t be 
angry in so fine a house; and, being fortunate 
enough to arrive about half-past seven o’clock of the 
evening, they conducted me to a bedroom as big as 
a church, and sent as many men to wait upon me 
as though I had been an Emperor. This put Paddy 
in a dilemma, for, notwithstanding that his fore- 
fathers were kings in their own countries, he can’t 
suffer another man to put a shirt on his back, nor is 
he happy when a couple of flunkeys would see his 
head in the washtub. 

You must know that Harry wrote me a long let- 
ter inviting me to this house, and telling me nothing 
at all, except that his wife was here. I’d suspected 
it all along, though hearing the name of the place 
for the first time; and now, says I, the truth is com- 


The Show Girl 


331 


ing out at last. ’Tis some great man or woman in 
Paris who has been after hunting the child, and that 
poor Count d’ Antoine who was murdered at Hamp- 
stead was but his or her ambassador. I’d have been 
worse than a fool not to have guessed as much after 
receiving Harry’s letter and reading the papers — 
though God forbid I should come to believe any 
newspaper at my time of life. For all that, I know 
a fox when I see one; and what I say is this, that 
Mimi has aristocratic friends in Paris, and there were 
rogues who got news of those friends, and set out 
to blackmail them. I’ll swear as much against all 
the justices. ’Tis a vulgar crime, after all, and the 
truth will make it no better. 

This I must tell you to begin with, for ’tis a 
different kind of story which must come after. The 
last paragraph of this letter left me in the dressing- 
room at the chateau — and that’s no place for a lady. 
I’d been there about five minutes? I suppose, when 
Harry came roaring in, and hailed me with a hunt- 
ing cry you could have heard away in Paris. Faith, 
the man had lost his head entirely, and when, he had 
kissed me on both cheeks as the Frenchmen do, he 
rolled me over and over on the bed — though I had 
a clean shirt on my back — and treated me worse 
than any terrier. ’Twas “Paddy, you brick!” and 
“Paddy, such news!” and “She’s here, in the house, 


332 


The Show Girl 


Paddy!” until my ears were bursting with it. Not 
a word would he let me speak, though I had a king’s 
message to bear him, and when I got down to the 
drawing-room at last my collar was up to my ears 
and my white choker on top of it. A fine figure 
of a man I must have looked among such company 
— and the Marquis bowing to me until his nose 
almost touched his boots, and Madame the Princess 
flashing a pair of eyes nearly as black and as wicked 
as your own. But there I was, and I had to make 
the best of it, and not a man or a woman would I 
notice until I had caught the little Greuze girl in 
my arms and squeezed her until she hollered. 

Well, they were all amused at this, and Madame, 
the Princess Helene, who is one of my friends, and 
a great lady in Paris, she took my arm and led me 
off to the dinner-table. I had the Duchess© upon 
one side of me and the Princess upon the other; and 
faith, says I, what a tale to tell at Glendalough. 
Such gold and silver plate, Martha; such glass, such 
paintings! My neck aches this very day for staring 
up to the ceilings to look at the gods and goddesses 
dancing in the hayfields, and caring no more for the 
liquor down below than the archbishop at a teeto- 
talers’ meeting. What with these bare-legged 
beauties and the great ladies and the witty talk, 
bedad, I could have been content to stop at the table 


The Show Girl 333 

a month, and to have thought twice about leaving 
it then. 

Eut this is to speak of Paddy O’Connell, and 
you, woman-like, will be all for hearing of Madame 
Mimi. How did she bear herself, you ask? The 
little colleen out of the cafes and the circus — how 
did she carry herself in such a place? Why, no 
grand dame born to it could have done better. Even 
my friend the Marquis told me so afterwards; while, 
as for the Princess, she couldn’t like the child better 
if she were her own daughter. Hot one of them 
that does not spoil and pet her, believe me. I listen 
to their talk, and a thousand wild thoughts run in 
my head. What is Mimi to them? Why did they 
send to London for her ? How comes it that ruffians 
would have blackmailed them? 

You are a discreet little body, and you will not 
speak of this to any human being; but you’ll think 
about it very much, Martha, as I am thinking about 
it this minute, and saying I’d be a fool not to guess 
the truth of it. And if my suppositions are true, 
is the child’s behaviour a wonder to be gaped at? 
You will be the first to say “no” to that. She has 
the blood of nobles in her veins, and what matter a 
jot if the bend sinister is written across her story? 
Let the story go where it will. I would be proud 


334 The Show Girl 

of it if I were Harry — and so much I have told 
him today. 

Write to me as soon as you can — when your 
husband is at his sermons should bo a good op- 
portunity — and tell me how far I am right. My 
own programme is uncertain. This lovely Novem- 
ber weather makes life well enough in the glorious 
park about this chateau, and a sweet time we are 
having of it. The Marquis plays golf very well, 
and I am winning money of him. Mimi and Harry 
are nearly always on horseback, for he is teaching 
her to ride, and a willing pupil he has found. What 
is troubling them is the approaching trial of the 
man Bedotte, who, it seems, was Count d’ Antoine’s 
valet, and is to be tried at St. Germain for the 
murder of the old woman Marie. I fear the public, 
which laps up a scandalous story as a dog takes 
water, will insist upon much being told which other- 
wise should be concealed. But we shall have the 
judge with us, for where is the lawyer born who 
could write unkind things about that beautiful 
woman the Princess Helene ? 

Bely upon me, in any case, to send you all the 
news. Harry is fretting still for his fortune, though 
Mimi, I hear, is to have two thousand a year from 
the Marquis. He says he means to accept an offer 
from the editor of the “Daily Bulletin” to become 


The Show Girl 


335 


Paris correspondent at a stiffish sum, and I do be- 
lieve he’ll carry out the threat. In which case they 
will have an apartment in Paris and a villa at 
Fontainebleau which he discovered the other day 
when in his motor-car. 

I’ll be a lonely man then, Martha, and glad to 
see you sometimes. Should the “Society for the 
Suppression of Human Emotions” determine to hold 
its meetings in London, you’ll be going there and 
may manage to let me know. In which case, an 
accident might find me in the great Metropolis also. 

Meanwhile, with my kind regards, believe me, 
dear Mrs. Warrington, 

Yours faithfully, 

Paddy O’Connell. 


CHAPTER XLIV. 


[Mr. James Frogg, of Serjeant’s Inn, receives an un- 
expected answer to an expectant letter.] 

Chateau de Bougival, near Paris. 

December 2nd, 1905. 

James Frogg, Esq. 

Sir, — In answer to your esteemed letter demand- 
ing to know how far the conditions of my revered 
father’s will have been observed by me, I beg to 
state : 

1. That they have been wholly fulfilled. 

2. That an agreement was signed yesterday be- 
tween the editor of the ‘TDaily Bulletin” and myself, 
in which I am engaged by him as his Paris corre- 
spondent for the term of one year, at a salary of 
seven hundred pounds. 

A copy of this agreement I beg to enclose for 
your inspection, and remain, Sir, 

Yours faithfully, 

Henry Gastonard. 


336 


CHAPTER XLV. 


[Mr. James Frogg, of Serjeant’s Inn, passes on the 
unpleasant news to the Reverend Arthur War- 
rington, of Beldon, Suffolk.] 

3, Serjeant’s Inn, London, E.C. 

December 4th, 1905. 

The Reverend Arthur Warrington, M.A. 

Reverend and dear Sir, — I have this day received 
the enclosed letter from Mr. Gastonard. Its claims, 
I fear, are incontestable. 

The Will of the late Henry Gastonard, of Bor- 
deaux and London, provided that the bulk of his con- 
siderable fortune should pass from the possession of 
his only son in the case that the young man was not 
earning five hundred pounds a year by his own ef- 
forts at the age of twenty-five years. 

Such a condition, I regret to say, has now been 
fulfilled. The Agreement between Henry Gastonard 
and the editor of the “Daily Bulletin” is not a docu- 
ment I should advise you to contest. Ho court would 
question its bona fides; nor would any Chancery 
337 


338 The Show Girl 

* 

judge be willing to interpret the Will in any strict 
sense. 

Such are the facts. Believe me, dear Sir, that 
I deplore them, and am, 

Your faithful servant, 

James Frogg. 

My charges in the matter of this business, £74 
6s. 8d., are detailed in the schedule I have the hon- 
our to enclose. 


CHAPTER XLYI. 


[The Reverend Arthur Warrington receives the 

news and makes some complaint of it.] 

The Red Farm, Beldon, Suffolk, 
December 5th, 1905. 

James Frogg, Esq. 

Dear Mr. Fogg, — God’s will be done — though 
this, indeed, is dreadful news. That the cup should 
be dashed from my lips at the last moment! I can 
hardly believe my eyes while I read. 

Of course, this alleged contract is nothing but a 
trick. Would anyone pay seven hundred pounds a 
year to a youth who has lived a worthless life? Why, 
even I cannot earn a hundred pounds a year by my 
writings, and you know how voluminous they have 
been. 

I must tell you plainly that if I cannot derive 
some benefit under this Will, my affairs will be in 
a very bad way. The debts incurred by my wife at 
the time of that miserable and insensate pageant at 
Lowestoft still press heavily upon me and interfere 
with my work among the poor. I owe some two 
339 


340 


The Show Girl 

hundred pounds beside, chiefly to my publishers, who 
brought out my last volumes upon Athanasius and 
St. John Chrysostom. They have the indelicacy to 
say that there is no money in the Apostles. I mu£t 
pay their account immediately, and also your own. 
charges. 

Would it be possible, do you think, to find some 
wealthy person who would lend me money upon note 
of hand alone? I should not object to a reasonable 
rate of interest — though perhaps they would lend it 
to the Lord at a lower figure? How can a clergyman 
do his duty when harassed by debt? 

This is a dreadful misfortune, and I cannot con- 
template it with equanimity. What will Henry do 
with his vast fortune? Oh, it is deplorable to think 
that it may be spent chiefly upon this dancing girl, 
who, I have reason to believe, is the natural daughter 
of a dissolute French nobleman. My own position 
is rendered more difficult by the fact that I have al- 
ready entered into considerable engagements upon 
the supposition that nothing could deprive me of the 
money. And now Henry so far forgets his birth 
and tradition as to write for a common newspaper. 

Will you please to let me know what I shall have 
to pay by way of interest for a loan, say of five hun- 
dred pounds? Would fifteen per cent, satisfy the 
lender? I have some hopes of being chosen for one 


The Show Girl 341 

of the new canonries at Bury St. Edmunds, which 
is about to become a cathedral city. This would 
mean eight hundred pounds a year and a house, I 
suppose. I could pay off the money in three years. 

Kindly write to me without delay. 

Yours truly, 

Arthur Warrington. 

P.S. — Should you see Mrs. Warrington, I beg 
you will not mention to her the fact that I am trying 
to borrow money. My loss, I regret to say, causes 
her some amusement. She is going to London this 
week to support the meeting of the Society for the 
Suppression of the Human Emotions — but I have 
not the heart to accompany her. She would have 
gone to the Charing Cross Hotel, but she hears by 
accident that a very objectionable Irishman, who is 
her particular aversion, happens to be staying there; 
so she will be at the Grand. She may call upon you. 
Be discreet, I pray. 


CHAPTER XL VII. 


[Paddy O’Connell informs his sister Clara that he is 
detained in London upon business of some im- 
portance.] 

The Grand Hotel, Charing Cross, 
December 13th, 1905. 

Dear Clara, — I arrived here on Saturday night 
from Paris, but I didn’t come on to you for reasons 
which the great Deep can speak of, and especially 
that part of it which lies between Dover and Calais. 
Faith, every soul on board but me was sick; and 
nothing but the natural delicacy of my feelings pre- 
vented that same calamity overtaking me. 

I propose now to rest a few days in London. 
There are my stockbrokers to see, and some of 
Harry’s business to be attended to. You have heard 
by my letters and the newspapers all that has been 
going on in France, so I do no more than to tell you 
that Harry is hard at work already as a newspaper 
correspondent, and a mighty pretty one at that. If 
he doesn’t succeed as a newspaper man, it will be 
because he tells the truth, which is not what some 
342 


343 


The Show Girl 

of ’em in Fleet-street want at all, as I found out 
when I called John Ferguson, of the “Daily Herald,” 
a black-hearted liar. But Harry will do well, I 
hope; and he’s saved his fortune for certain. 

Apropos of this, ’tis the oddest thing in the 
world, but I met Mrs. Warrington in this very hotel, 
and had some talk with her. She is a sensible little 
body, and doesn’t grudge Harry his fortune at all. 

“After all,” says she, “ ’twas his father’s money 
and not ours.” But I fear the parson man, her 
husband, is in a bad way about it and swearing like 
the devil. It appears that he’s been counting his 
chickens before they were hatched, and a pretty 
brood of blue envelopes have come out of the nest. 
I shall have to be writing to Harry to do something 
for him. ’T'is not cricket at all to be expecting a 
fool to pay the whole price of his folly, for God 
knows, we are no wiser than we were bom, and 
that’s not very wise at all where some of us are 
concerned. 

I shall stay a few days in London, though I ex- 
pect to be very busy all the time. To-night I may 
go to the theatre by way of relaxation; you wouldn’t 
have me kill myself with hard work, though anxious 
I am to get home to Ireland and the riding. 

I will just say that Harry writes to me almost 
every day, and is full of his happiness. My friend, 


344 


The Show Girl 


the Princess Helene, has gone to Corfu on the Mar- 
quis’s yacht, and the Huchesse de Bourg with her. 
Harry and Mimi could have the great chateau to 
themselves if they chose; but, will you believe it, 
they have gone up to the little house on the Butte, 
just to pass a day or two, they say, and to see what 
the old life was like. ’T'would be odd to hear that 
the little Greuze girl cared anything about that now, 
but I suppose Harry knows what he is doing, and 
he’ll have plenty of murders to send to the news- 
papers. 

Ho not be at the pains to write to me, Clara. I 
shall be coming home as soon as all these lawyer 
men have finished with me. 

Meanwhile, I am, as ever, your affectionate 
brother, Paddy. 

There was a man stopped me by Charing Cross 
Station yesterday, and asked me if I could direct 
him to the house of the Archdeacon of Middlesex. 
I had a little talk with him, and took him afterwards 
to my hotel. ’Twas a most wonderful story he had 
to tell me. His cousin, it appears, is a prisoner in 
Spain, and knows of a buried treasure near Cadiz. 
About fifty pounds will buy the man’s liberty, and 
he’s willing to share the treasure, which dates back 
from Columbus’ day, and is mostly in moidores, 
though all sound gold, with any man that will find 


The Show Girl 


345 


him the money. T m of the mind to join them. 
’Twould be something to come home to you, Clara, 
with a ship full of guineas. And all for a paltry 
fifty pounds. 


CHAPTER XLVIII. 


[In which Henry Gastonard hears of Jules Farman 
again, and of the criminal known as Bedotte the 
valet.] 

4 (his), Rue du Quatre Septembre, 
Paris, 

February 21st, 1906. 

Monsieur, — I have the honour to report as fol- 
lows: — 

The criminal Henry Bedotte Sanvalier was ex- 
ecuted this morning on the public ground between 
the prisons of La Roquette and Les Jeunes De- 
tenues. 

I was privileged to visit the prisoner at five 
o’clock and spent some minutes alone with him. He 
was entirely unrepentent, and heard with much sat- 
isfaction that his comrade, Gondre, the showman, 
had received a sentence of ten years’ forced labour. 
I have, monsieur, seen many men die before the 
gates of La Roquette, but no man more contemptu- 
ous of death or its sequel. Of this, however, you 
will read in the newspapers. 

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347 


The Show Girl 

My questions to Bedotte were few but important. 
I had to discover (a) if Madame d’Alengon had 
played any conspicuous part in this affair, and (b) 
under what circumstances the abduction of Madame 
Gastonard from the Convent of Orleans was safely 
accomplished. To both of these I had satisfactory 
answers. 

There was another actor in this drama, mon- 
sieur, but he is dead. I refer to the husband of the 
woman Marie, a man who had been in the service of 
the Marquis de Saint Faur, who planned the abduc- 
tion of the child, and who hid her successfully from 
the police during the active weeks of the pursuit. 

Madame, your wife, is speaking but in general 
terms when she tells us that she has no clear memory 
of this criminal — nor might we expect it. But it is 
clear that no convent would be so conducted that 
children could pass its gates when they chose; and 
that if any such event had occurred, the police of 
Orleans would not have failed in their duty. 

No, monsieur, Madame Gastonard was cleverly 
kidnapped from the house during the hour of the 
children’s recreation. She was carried to the poorer 
quarter of Orleans, and there hidden for many 
weeks. In the interval an unforeseen event occurred: 
the husband — the man who knew the truth — was 
arrested. The old woman had but a vague notion 


348 


The Show Girl 


of it; she carried the child away with her upon a 
gipsy’s journey, fell in with the showman Gondre, 
and finally sold her prize to that honest fellow Cas- 
sadore. And now, monsieur, the sequel becomes 
clearer. 

When you sent me to make enquiries at Orleans 
as to the truth of certain stories you had heard 
concerning the infancy of Madame Gastonard, it 
chanced that another was similarly occupied for a 
purpose which will be self-evident. She was Madame 
Lea d’Alengon, then posing in Paris as your friend. 
Her acquaintance with Count d’ Antoine was slight, 
but she used it as a clever woman could to extort 
from him some confession of the truth. Possibly, 
although this could not be proved in a court of law, 
she herself set counter agencies to work. She may 
have betrayed the secret to the man Gondre; if not 
to him, then to the old woman Marie. The crim- 
inals themselves appear, upon this, to have joined 
forces and arrived at a determination to work to- 
gether. They* did not know where Madame Gas- 
tonard was to be found in London; but they fol- 
lowed the Count to her house, and there murdered 
him — as Bedotte declares — because he threatened 
them with the police. Their object was to black- 
mail the Marquis de Saint Faur and the Princess 
Helene. But most fortunately this was prevented. 


349 


The Show Girl 

The public may have guessed the truth; but many 
truths are guessed by the public, monsieur, and re- 
main guesses to the end. 

Monsieur, the world forgets these things very 
quickly, and it will not be less willing to blot out 
this page. If it should be turned once more, you 
will have Madame d’Alengon to thank. But I shall 
not fail to frighten her, and fear is the only weapon 
which will silence a woman’s tongue. In this you 
may count upon me, not only in your own interests 
but in those of my esteemed patron, the Marquis 
de Saint Faur. 

I will add, monsieur, that a vast crowd assembled 
to see Sanvalier die, and that his death was ac- 
companied by that brutal circumstance which un- 
happily is still favoured by our French law: the man 
would not receive the priest Abbe Falier nor permit 
any consolations but those of a glass of brandy and 
of a cigarette. He smoked when they had bound 
him, and the cigarette was still between his lips 
when the head fell. Such was the end of a very 
evil scoundrel who murdered a noble gentleman and 
deserved a fate less kind. 

I will add that at the moment when the knife 
descended and struck the head from the body, I 
heard a shout from the crowd, and perceived there 
the notorious Jean-le-Mont. This man’s release was 


350 


The Show Girl 


necessary, but I regret it. He has returned to the 
old Lapin Agil on the Butte, where I doubt not that 
I shall soon have the pleasure of arresting him upon 
another account. 

Be assured, monsieur, of my esteem, and permit 
me to remain, 

Your faithful servant, 

Jules Henry Farm an. 


CHAPTER XLIX. 


[Madam© Lea d’Alengon has really nothing to say; 

but she says it charmingly as ever.] 

The Hotel Metropole, Monte Carlo, 
February 25th, 1906. 

Dear Mr. Gastonard, — I compliment you upon 
your self-denial. To refuse an invitation to dinner 
with your old friend! And to forbid me the op- 
portunity of complimenting Madame! 

Surely it is not true, cher Monsieur Henry, that 
Madame Gastonard is about to return to the circus ? 
I positively refuse to believe it. But the world has 
such a mechante tongue. Tell me that it is not so. 
Indeed, the report — and your unkindness — move me 
to some envy. Must I tame the lions — at my age? 
Helas, the spangles do not suit me! 

It was good of you to come here, for now we 
may talk. How proud you must be of Madame’s 
success. I have even heard it said that she is learn- 
ing to speak grammatically. How clever of her 
when one remembers the lions and the hoop ! I am 
sure you are very, very proud ! 

351 


352 


The Show Girl 


My dear husband has returned from Tunis. We 
were laughing together yesterday at your misfortune 
— but very kindly of course. How very foolish of 
you to amuse Paris as you did. And all for a mere 
woman. 

Ah well, as the proverb goes — il n’y a que le 
matin en toutes choses. 

Your friend, 

Lea d’Alencon. 


CHAPTER L. 


[Mimi the Simpleton writes a brief note to Madame 
the Princess Helene of Ilidze and we trans- 
late it.] 

The Riviera Palace Hotel, 
Monte Carlo, 

March 3d, 1906. 

Dearest Mother, — We return to Paris to-day, 
and Harry says that I may write to you. I have 
wished to write so many times, but he has forbidden 
me. We are to go to Paris and then to London to 
see that great big Monsieur Paddy, who loves me. 

Dearest mother, there has never been anyone 
in my life to whom I could speak as I have spoken 
to you. All the secrets have been locked in my own 
heart, but you have shared them. When I was in 
Paris at the cafes and the circus, I knew that some- 
one would come some day and open the secret place 
of my love. You only in all the world can do so. 
Many, many years I carried my hope with me and 
never dared to speak of it. How much, dearest 
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354 


The Show Girl 

mother, is a woman alone among men. W e bear our 
burdens and none knows of them. 

Will you write to me, dearest, to the chateau; 
and I will have the letters sent to London, if we 
go there. I know that I may not see you often, but 
I will count the days until I see you again. Our 
jewels do not shine less brightly because we do not 
look at them, and I know that you think of me as 
your child. So often have I said she is my mother, 
and that is the sweetest word. The years were long, 
dearest, until I learned it; but I would live them all 
again if the end might be like this. 

Harry writes so well that they wish him to go 
to England. He has promised to go there to see 
his cousin, Madame Martha, who is in trouble. She 
has lost all her money and Harry is going to give 
her some, for her husband the clergyman cannot 
preach without money, and that would make the 
people unhappy, she says. Afterwards we wish to 
buy the Chateau of Marcey-le-Bideau and to go 
there for all our holidays. Harry says that he does 
not wish to write any more for the newspapers. It 
makes him so angry when they leave his work out 
and put someone else’s in. And it is never so good 
as Harry’s. 

Dearest mother, will you come to Marcey-le- 


The Show Girl 355 

Rideau and let me call you mother there? It will 
not he my home if you do not. 

All the lonely, lonely years forgotten ! Dearest, 
will you say that they must never return ? 

Your loving daughter, 


Mimi. 


CHAPTER LI. 


[Mimi and Harry write to Paddy and advise him of 

their approaching visit to Ireland.] 

On board the Lapin Agil, Lisbon, 
April 2d, 1906. 

Dear Paddy, — Yon have been too long without a 
letter, so now we are both writing to you. 

I am holding the pen and Harry is spelling the 
English words. That is why there are so many blots. 

Dear Mr. Paddy, we cannot go back to Paris. 
We went there once and lived for three days at the 
old Maison du bon Tabac. It was so beastly. Harry 
says you (meaning me) must be very young to live 
where the people have nothing to do but to say what 
they will do some day. So we have grown up and 
do not do it. 

We are now in Lisbon, where, Harry says, they 
used to have an earthquake. It has not swallowed 
up all the people, but there are a great many left. 
Harry says the girls are very pretty, but I do not 
think so. 

It is better to be on a yacht when she is standing 

356 


The Show Girl 357 

still than when she is walking. I do not like the sea, 
but Harry says it is good for me. 

Please, Mr. Paddy, may we come to Ireland to 
see you? It was very naughty of you to quarrel 
with cousin Martha because she said you could not 
play golf. And to go back to Ireland in a huff. Of 
course, we shall say you play golf very well when 
we are at your castle. 

Harry has bought the Chateau of Marcey-le- 
Pideau, and we are to descend there in the summer. 
One room is to be called Mr. Paddy’s room. Harry 
says it shall be very big, so that you can beat the 
floor with the golf clubs. He is building a little 
house in the grounds which we have named the Mai- 
son du bon Tabac. You may smoke there, Mr. 
Paddy, when you are angry and cannot get out of 
the bunker. 

We met Madame Lea at Monte Carlo, and I did 
not bow to her. She has grown so ugly and has 
fallen in love with her husband. Ah, mes enfants! 
What would happen to people if they were to fall in 
love with their husbands ! 

At Cintra, which is a very beautiful mountain 
near here, we met an American lady, who, Harry 
says, is an heiress. You should come out and marry 
her. Perhaps she would fall in love with you after- 
wards. 


358 


The Show Girl 


But I will not have anybody falling in love with 
Mr. Paddy. He is my friend. I wish him to die as 
a bachelor. Harry says he will do it, so I am happy. 

Please say if we may come to your castle. The 
yacht will take us, but I shall go upon the railway 
line. 

Your affectionate 

Mimi. 

P.S. — Say if it’s convenient, old chap? Don’t 
for heaven’s sake turn your good sister out to grass, 
or anything of that sort. Just a bed and a crust, 
with a pipe and a whisky afterwards. It will be 
enough to see you, old Brian Boru. And God bless 
you, anyway. 


THE END. 







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